The director of Atomic Homefront calls her documentary “the feel-bad movie of the year.” That’s how Rebecca Camissa described it at a special advance showing last night in St. Louis, and she wasn’t kidding. The movie chronicles the sad and infuriating story of people who live near the Bridgeton West Lake Landfill in a northern St. Louis suburb, where, underground, a smoldering garbage fire is metastasizing, creeping ominously close to radioactive waste dumped nearby in the 1970s and 80s.

It’s a difficult story to tell for several reasons. First, to understand the current situation, you have to delve into a complicated history that starts in the 1940s, when a St. Louis chemical company was commissioned to dispose of radioactive waste generated by the creation of the atomic bomb. The waste was transported [often in open, spewing truck beds] and dumped in several locations, mixed with soil, then dug up and moved again. The routes and the amounts were kept secret for many years. It was only decades later, when a local resident began to realize that many of her school classmates, who lived in areas near the landfill, had developed cancer, that people in the area began to wonder what was going on.

In addition, the personal stories of cancer victims make this an emotionally difficult film. Several people featured in the film’s most poignant scenes have subsequently died, and others are still mourning friends and family. They contend that the cancer and the presence of radioactive waste—not just in the landfill but also in Coldwater Creek, where many children played [and still do]—are linked. It is very tough to watch, but a necessary piece of the narrative.

Atomic Homefront also arouses anger. The film follows a group of concerned citizens, known as Just Moms STL. Spurred to action by the problem in their own neighborhood, they juggle family responsibilities with strategy sessions, activist training, community forums and meetings with government officials. In one segment, we see Dawn Chapman, one of the initiators of Just Moms STL, sweeping her kitchen floor while talking on the phone with a state legislator. It is an authentic, un-glamorous, un-staged, everyday moment in the life of someone who never envisioned herself as an activist. [The contrast with filmmaker Michael Moore’s phony, ambush encounters in his films is stark.]

It’s the meetings with government officials that really make your blood boil. Time after time, officials from agencies, ostensibly charged with protecting the environment,deny that a problem exists, make excuses, offer empty promises and become suddenly unavailable when Just Moms STL leaders show up at their offices.

We see several situations in which officials deliver, with a straight face, absurd statements that are totally divorced from reality. One representative of the US Environmental Protection Agency presents what he calls “a simplified equation of the effects of radiation,” which, when displayed, turns out to be anything but simple, prompting derisive laughter from the audience. In another instance, an EPA official says that the landfill is safe, and that the fire will “self-extinguish.” A representative of the US Army Corps of Engineers states that the agency doesn’t think it is necessary to put up health-warning signs along Coldwater Creek. A manager of the smoldering, acrid-smelling landfill tells a Just Moms activist that the stench is “landfill perfume.”

The film also captures the powerful moment when community residents, previously unaware of the smoldering landfill and the nearby radioactive waste, receive notices from the local school district about a newly created emergency plan, which would be activated “in case of a radioactive event at the landfill.” Taken completely by surprise, they justifiably fear for their children and turn out in droves to a hastily convened community meeting. In one jaw-dropping scene from the meeting, a woman addresses the crowd, demanding action as she reveals that she moved to the area 20 years earlier—from Chernobyl—to save her children, only to find out that she is now living in another highly toxic neighborhood.

Atomic Homefront creates an admirable balance among four key aspects of the Bridgeton Landfill story: history, human impact, local activism, and government response. I found a few stylistic choices to quibble about: It spends a bit too much time on mood-setting; it includes too much un-narrated and visually unappealing exposition. But I applaud the director’s effort to tackle this complex subject and to get it right for the people who have worked so hard to get justice and push for a remedy.

Unfortunately, you can’t leave this film feeling much hope. In the credits, Camissa offers a list of too many elected officials and agency representatives who did not agree to appear in the film. Their absence is a sad commentary on government responsiveness. And keep in mind that the film ends in November 2016, just after the election of Donald Trump. If you think the Obama-era officials who stonewalled and delayed action during the three years covered in this film were bad, remember that the new head of EPA is Scott Pruitt, an avowed anti-environmental zealot who is dismantling the agency’s mission as you read this article. You can’t help but feel bad for Dawn Chapman, Just Moms STL, and the people living in the neighborhood.

[Atomic Homefront received funding from HBO and is scheduled to appear on that network later in 2017 or early in 2018.]

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What happens when a landfill fire meets a radioactive waste dump?  St. Louis, Missouri, may be the first metropolitan area to find out.

In North St. Louis County, near the St. Louis Airport, and a mile from Pattonville High School, the Westlake Landfill is on fire. It’s not a flaming, above-ground fire, but something more insidious and potentially more dangerous: a smoldering underground fire caused by years of decomposing garbage, the methane gas it produces, and the oxygen that has seeped in.

Close by – some say within 300 feet—is another [previously hidden] burial ground, where high-grade uranium leftovers were dumped during the 1970s.

The smoldering fire is spreading. The boundaries of the radioactively contaminated soil are not clearly delineated. The timing of the merger of the two entities is anybody’s guess. And having never encountered this situation before, no one really knows what the result would be.

A mushroom cloud is not going to happen; and there probably won’t be an explosion. But many speculate that the situation is akin to a slow-motion dirty bomb [without the boom], poised to spread some very nasty stuff into the environment.

Environmentalists say that this situation is unique and unprecedented in the U.S. Neighbors, “radio-activists,” fire officials, EPA regulators, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and Republic Services–which operates the landfill-—agree that something must be done. But no one knows precisely what that something is, or who should be responsible for doing it.

Here’s my [unscientific, unofficial, and possibly factually flawed] understanding of the situation:

How did this happen?

It all started in 1942, when the US decided to try to develop an atomic bomb. A St. Louis chemical company—Mallinckrodt—won the contract to process the uranium needed for the bomb. The source material came from a mine in what was then the Belgian Congo. It was uranium of a radioactive strength unmatched anywhere else. But the enrichment process left tons of highly radioactive waste, and Mallinckrodt had to find a way of getting rid of it. At first, they dumped it downtown, where their main processing plant was. In 1946, Mallinckrodt started dumping it on a 21-acre property just north of the St. Louis Airport. [It’s known as SLAPS.]

In the 1960s, a different company bought the waste ore from the airport site and transported it [sometimes in open trucks] to a nearby storage site. [The Latty Avenue site.]  There was a lot to move: 74,000 tons of Belgian Congo soil, containing approximately 13 tons of uranium; 32,000 tons of Colorado soil containing about 48 tons of uranium; and another 7 tons of uranium from somewhere else.

Finally, in the 1970s, another 47,000 tons of soil mixed with radioactive waste wound up in the nearby West Lake Landfill. At the time, there were no safety regulations for landfills regarding this kind of waste. One activist recently told me that, at the time the landfill operators did ot know that the radioactive waste had been mixed with topsoil. “So, they used those enormous piles of dirt to cover and level out garbage daily,” she said. “Sadly, that radioactive waste now lies nearly on the surface of the landfill, which is why it more easily becomes airborne in the form of dust.”

That toxic stew decomposed and bubbled for years, but almost no one knew that it contained radioactive waste. Then, in 2013, Republic Services reported that an underground area of the landfill was smoldering. That development made some people begin to take notice.

A few years earlier, a group of women who had attended a nearby North County high-school began realizing that many of their classmates—and members of their families– had been diagnosed with various cancers. It seemed like too many of them. They remembered that, as children, many of them had played in nearby Coldwater Creek—a tributary of the Missouri River—which some industrial companies had used as a dumping ground over the years. They also recalled roaming around the open fields and railroad tracks near St. Louis Airport. After looking into it more closely, they were shocked to discover that their neighborhood was ground zero for radioactive waste dumping.

In the early 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency made SLAPS and Latty Ave into Superfund sites. The cleanup at those sites is nearing completion, under the direction of a federal sub-agency called FUSRAP.  [Of course, it’s hard to know when you’re really finished:  The boundaries of the radioactive areas are squishy, because wind, rain and flooding tend to move soil around.]

But Westlake remains a problem. Several groups of activists have been persistent and outspoken in pushing for a resolution to the problems in the area. [Some call themselves “radio-activists.”] But they’re trying to navigate a dizzying matrix of agencies with conflicting jurisdictions and agendas: EPA, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, local politicians, the Bridgeton Fire Department, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to name a few. Some have proven helpful, but many seem to be in denial. [At one community meeting, an EPA official is recorded on video saying, “We have no evidence that the radioactive waste is near the fire.”]

In 2008, EPA proposed sealing off one of the waste areas with a 5-foot cap. Very little happened to that plan, but just this week [April 18, 2016] at another community meeting, EPA revived the idea. It received a chilly reception from  many residents and activists, who have been pushing for years for removal, rather than further burial, of the contaminated waste. Westlake Landfill activists also are leading an  a effort to secure a voluntary buyout of properties within a one-mile radius of the landfill.

Even the “good guys” can be difficult: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control [CDC] has been reluctant to accept the notion that there are cancer clusters in the area. A separate group of activists–“Coldwater Creek – Just the Facts” — is focused on a federal health assessment aimed at determining if there is a link between the elevated cancer rates in the area and radioactive contamination.

In the meantime, most residents of St. Louis City and County are only marginally aware of what’s going on “up there” in the North County area. Even people who now live—or formerly did—near the dump sites may not realize what they may have been exposed to. And when they receive a diagnosis of an unusual cancer, their doctors may say, “This is so rare. You are one in a million.”  The radio-activists beg to differ: “You actually are one of millions,” they counter.

I recently took a tour of “radioactive St. Louis,” guided by a very knowledgeable activist from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. We went to Latty Ave., to SLAPS and to Westlake, where we ran into a “Just Moms” founder who was making her daily rounds of the site. She was taking pictures of the latest efforts to contain the fire, tamp down the stench, and keep a lid on the situation—literally: The whole landfill is covered with a green tarp, over which is vast web of hoses and exhaust pipes, plus valves, and air-quality meters, and surrounded by a very tall chain-link fence. Iconic yellow “radioactive” signs are everywhere. It’s something you really wouldn’t want in your neighborhood.

And it’s scary. What will happen next is not within the realm of accurate prediction, said our guide. We may not even know when whatever is going to happen actually happens. Maybe it already has. And it’s possible that the consequences may not manifest themselves for years.

One thing is certain, though: The world should be watching.

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Polluting businesses use their money and influence to pass terrible legislation that goes against the interest of Missourians.  Few bills demonstrate this fact more than House Bill 650.

Dubbed the “Free to Pollute Bill” by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, HB 650:

• Exempts Springfield’s City Utilities from a preliminary site investigation for a new toxic coal ash waste landfill. The Department of Natural Resources had already refused to site the landfill because of the porous karst topography in the location that City Utilities proposed.
• Allows Confined Animal Feeding Operations (factory farms) to wait until after completing all their construction before announcing their plans to neighbors. This makes it more difficult for people stop one of these often dangerous and foul smelling operations from moving nearby.
• Severely limits punitive damages that juries can impose against lead mining and smelting company Doe Run Resources. Doe Run has knowingly poisoned children for decades in southeast Missouri.

HB 650 passed in the spring. Then the Missouri Sierra Club mobilized nearly 1000 members and supporters to contact Governor Jay Nixon, asking him to veto the bill. To his credit, Nixon vetoed HB 650.

Unfortunately the provisions that gave special privileges to factory farms were in another bill that Nixon had to sign in order to keeps the Department of Natural Resources functioning. The same was the case with the siting exemption for City Utilities, as planned by Rep. Lincoln Hough, who behaved as though he was an employee of the Springfield utility instead of a representative of his constituents.

But the veto did preserve people’s right to hold Doe Run accountable for their actions.

This, of course, didn’t sit well with Doe Run. It used its money and its influence to convince legislators to change their votes. It even hired Rodney Hubbard, son of Representative Penny Hubbard, as a paid lobbyist. Unsurprisingly, in the veto override session, Rep. Hubbard changed her vote in order to support the company that was giving money to her son.  Despite Sierra Club members’ best efforts to contact state legislators, in the end Doe Run was able to just barely get the 109 votes it needed to override Nixon’s veto. (The veto override vote result in the House can be found here on page 33, and in the Senate it can be found here on page 30.

Now, Doe Run owner Ira Rennert can feel secure in his $186 million mansion counting his estimated $5.5 billion, knowing that there is a cap in compensation for the brain-damaged children whose poisoned bodies helped bring him his wealth.

The legislation has passed, but the saga is not over. The Missouri Trial Lawyer Association will challenge the constitutionality of the Doe Run provision in court. The Sierra Club will continue to fight to prevent City Utilities from siting its toxic coal ash landfill in dangerous topography. Meanwhile, we need to remember who voted to protect the rich and powerful, against the interest of everyone else. Let them know that we are watching.

Cross posted, with permission of the author, from Missouri Sierra Club.

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I buy too much clothing. Too many tops, too many pants, too many pairs of shoes.  I don’t wear them all, and when I have a cleanup spasm, I end up giving away the excess to whichever charity clothing drive calls first, looking for donations. Some of the items I donate probably get resold at thrift shops. Some is given away. Some of it may even make its way to clothing recyclers, who break down the textiles and use the fibers for new garments or textiles.

I’m recycling my clothes as fast as I can. But I fear that too much of it—stuff that doesn’t get sold, stuff that’s too worn out for anyone to buy–will end up taking up space again, not in my closet, but in a landfill.

It turns out that my fear is justified. According to National Geographic, clothing and household textiles, consisting of fabrics such as cotton, polyester, nylon and rayon, make up almost 5 percent of the total garbage in landfills. In North America, approximately 12 million tons of textile waste is generated each year—amounting to about 68 lbs. of waste per household per year. According to Soles4Souls.org, 300 million pairs of shoes are thrown away each year.

The reality is that a lot of clothes are going to end up in landfills, despite efforts to the contrary. So, a handful of manufacturers are developing biodegradable garments that will at least not make things worse.

Puma, for example, has announced plans to produce a biodegradable sneaker. According to the company, the sole of the sneaker will be made of biodegradable plastic and the upper of organic cotton and linen. After going through a shredder, it could become compost in six to nine months.

Another environmentally conscious company, called O1M One Moment, has begun marketing an innovative, multi-use shoe made of latex and other 100-percent-biodegradable raw materials.

And a design group called EarthBaked has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the creation of a biodegradable shoe called “PlusMinus.” According to EarthBaked, the shoe is durable, but it’s not intended to last a lifetime. But when it’s over, it blends back into the earth. EarthBaked’s product description explains how biodegradable clothing works:

Materials like wool and natural rubber make up the shoe and are intended to enrich the earth when properly disposed of. Wool is a naturally sustainable material because it’s soft, antimicrobial, breathable, moisture-wicking, water repellent, and durable. Once wool is introduced into soil, it works as a slow-release fertilizer. With a little heat, moisture and time, the fibers break down and release valuable sulfur and nitrogen into the soil.

Finally, Icebreaker Merino offers a line of earth-friendly outdoor wear made from the wool of New Zealand’s merino sheep. The company demonstrates the biodegradability of their products in a video, in which a t-shirt, buried for six months, is unearthed—well, what’s left of it. It’s an excellent object lesson in the advantages of biodegradable materials for clothing. They’re more expensive than the crap I usually buy, don’t wear enough, and donate. And if I buy them, my thrift shop truck-driver buddies won’t love me anymore. But if I can force myself to think longer term, they could be worth the price.

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The economic slump is reducing the amount of garbage sent to landfills. As a result, the life expectancy of some landfills may be extended. In Illinois, for example, the average remaining life span for landfills is 23 years. In the Southern Illinois region, the average expected remaining lifespan for landfills is just 18 years, and that’s with a 12.6% reduction from last year in the amount of waste received.

Nearly half of the waste sent to Metro-East Illinois landfills comes from Missouri. Although Illinois accepts waste from other states (Kentucky and Indiana, for example), 79 percent of Illinois’ imported waste comes from Missouri.

Industry experts have stated that the harsh economy is largely responsible for the overall reduction in waste. This reduction could delay the need for action to prevent Illinois landfills from overflowing. Previous reports had suggested the possibility of a looming emergency, particularly in the Northern region of Illinois.

Some regulations cause problems for landfill operators by being vague or unenforceable. A recent addition to regulation requires landfill operators to not place computers and other electronics in landfills if they came from households, but made an exception for businesses. (Of course, a landfill operator has no way of determining whether a computer came from a house or a place of business.)

Attitude adjustment needed

Efforts to reduce waste could further reduce landfill use, save money for individuals, companies and local government. Waste can be seen as a sign of inefficiency; indeed, the original meaning of the word waste implies that we should be seeking to reduce it, and many of us have been taught from childhood not to waste food, electricity and other things.  Envisioning waste as something that should be reduced can change our attitude. And that change in attitude can help  landfill operators to do a better job of adhering to EPA regulations.

It is now common knowledge that the Earth’s resources are limited, and that the continued waste of precious resources will catch up with us. Prevention is a key component in any effort to reduce waste. Preventive measures can be as simple as using products that last longer and using a product until it truly needs to be replaced. For example, a travel coffee mug does not need to be replaced simply because the finish no longer looks pristine or the cap broke a hinge – replacement caps are available.

Emulating Mother Nature

A sustainable method of living would provide methods to recycle nearly all waste into either new products, or into substances that do not destroy and poison soil, air and ground water. Nature recycles nearly everything she creates, with a minimum of waste. Emulation of this natural model, with a goal of completely eliminating waste, is the best path to radical breakthroughs in sustainable habits, lifestyles and goals of individuals and corporations.

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