EPA

Dawn Chapman is frustrated that it’s taken decades for the agency to announce what community members — many of whom have died or suffered illness from the exposure — knew for years.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources asked that the EPA assume oversight of the Bridgeton Landfill, arguing it may contain nuclear waste like the adjacent West Lake Landfill.

Federal officials discovered the contamination was far more widespread than previously known, the EPA announced Friday.

The complaint alleges that untreated sewage spills from East St. Louis outfalls into the Mississippi River and Whispering Willow Lake during “high-flow conditions,” such as heavy rain.

In addition to millions in repairs, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice and the state will require the city to pay a $30,000 penalty.

To date, only 4% of the money sought for projects to help the city of Cahokia Heights address its flooding and sewage crisis has been spent, according to an EPA analysis.

Bayer, the German company whose crop sciences division is based in St. Louis, has already paid out $10 billion for claims Roundup caused plaintiffs’ non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Officials and lawyers representing the city said Cahokia Heights had still not received most of the funding.

Fifteen years after the EPA said greenhouse gasses are dangerous to public health, the agency finalized rules to limit climate-warming pollution from existing coal and new gas power plants.

The coordinator, Beth Murphy, said a key accomplishment — what she calls the “matrix” — details ongoing construction projects, plus future construction and funding, to fix the chronic water issues plaguing the Metro East community.