Flood disaster in US Midwest

'It's going to get ugly': Midwest calls in national guard as flood disaster unfolds
Sixteen states issue flood warnings as waters blamed for 22 deaths in Illinois, while Missouri governor expects record-breaking disaster

the Guardian,

2 January, 2015

Floods have submerged towns, roads, casinos and shopping malls around the south and midwest for more than three days, prompting governors in Illinois and Iowa to call in the national guard.

Sixteen states issued flood warnings covering some eight million people. By Saturday floodwaters had begun to subside in many areas, reopening several important highways, after topping levees in the region late on Friday.

But swollen rivers have yet to crest in southern states, alarming governors in Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi. At Dardanelle, Arkansas, the National Weather Service recorded the Arkansas river at 41ft, nine feet above flood stage.

Missouri governor Jay Nixon said the overflow off the Mississippi would overtake the records set by “the great flood of 1993”, which killed 50 people, broke hundreds of levees and caused thousands to flee their homes.

Nixon visited Eureka and Cape Girardeau in eastern Missouri, where floodwaters caused widespread damage, and announced the federal government had approved his request to declare an emergency to help with the massive cleanup and recovery operation.

The governor described the scale of the flood damage as other worldly. “It’s almost as if you’re living on some other planet,” he said, standing near a growing pile of debris in a park in Eureka, about an hour’s drive west of St Louis on the banks of the Meramec river, which flows into the Mississippi.

“This is just a tiny fraction of the trail of destruction,” the governor told reporters.

In Illinois, governor Bruce Rauner ordered troops into action in the south of the state and declared 12 counties disaster zones. He began touring the waterlogged towns on Friday. Several thousand were evacuated from rural towns such as Pontoon Beach and Alton; 11 levees around the region have failed since flooding began last week. State authorities have blamed the flooding for 22 deaths and four missing people.

In south-western Illinois, the 500 or so people living behind the Len Small levee, which protects the hamlets of Olive Branch, Hodges Park, and Unity along with rural homes, were urged to move to higher ground after the Mississippi began pouring over the barrier.

Alexander County board chairman Chalen Tatum said sandbagging efforts were cut off because of the danger to volunteers. More water is expected to come before the river crests on Sunday.

“It’s going to get ugly,” Tatum said.

The national guard troops were expected to bring water pumps, sandbags, potable water and other supplies to communities overwhelmed by the flooding.

On Friday, search teams in central Illinois found the body of one of two missing teenagers reported missing on Monday, after their pickup truck was pulled into the floodwaters.

Divers concentrated their search in areas where a cellphone was traced. On Friday morning, one of the teens, Devan R Everett, was found in the water near the truck, county coroner Amy Calvert Winans announced.

Iowa governor Terry Branstad ordered national guard soldiers to assist recovery efforts in neighboring Missouri, where they will provide a water purification system. At St Charles, the Missouri river crested more than 10ft above flood stage.

Waters swamped an estimated 150 homes in Arnold, Missouri, near the meeting point of the Mississippi and the Meramec. The river crested there on Thursday at more than 47ft, two feet above the previous record and nine feet above what would be considered a serious flood.

With wastewater plants closed or damaged by the floods – and in one case, sewage pouring into the Mississippi – beer giant Anheuser-Busch has donated nearly 33,000 water cans in Oklahoma and around St Louis.

Hundreds of people were evacuated, including Damon Thorne, 44, and his 60-year-old mother, Linda, who live together in an Arnold mobile home park that washed away. For now, the Thornes are staying in a Red Cross shelter at a Baptist church.

“We’re just basically homeless,” Damon Thorne said. “We have nowhere to go.”

Philip and Jenn Bennett’s home after flood waters receded in their home in Fenton, Missouri on Saturday. Photograph: Kate Munsch/AFP/Getty Images

In south-eastern Missouri, the rising Mississippi damaged about 20 homes in Cape Girardeau and threatened a power substation, though a flood wall protected many of the community’s 40,000 residents. The crest prediction at Cape Girardeau expected on Sunday was upgraded to a foot and a half above the 1993 record.

In nearby Allenville, a town accustomed to floods, roads were cut off by high water. Most of the four dozen residents stayed anyway, using boats to get around.

“They are used to being isolated and cut off, but with this record height, we’re confident some homes will get wet,” Cape Girardeau County emergency management director Richard Knaup said. “We’re just not sure how many.”

Meteorologists expect water levels to increase in Memphis, Tennessee, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, into mid-January, possibly setting records as the rivers wend toward the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency on Thursday, and Mississippi governor Phil Bryant requested a federal disaster declaration from President Obama.

Radiation levels measured in St Louis, Missouri

From Dutchsinse – Do not eat the snow!!

12/14/2013 -- ☢ HIGH LEVELS of Radiation ☢ 81.4CPM in the Snow - St. Louis, Missouri

Radiation in Ibaraki pref, Japan

These videos were made in North Carolina, 2012, measuring high levels of radiation in the rain

28 X Background Radioactive Rain, Chapel Hill, NC, 05/09/12

From England: 20th June 2013 (around 500cpm) 03:50hrs

 n>

Cancer and nuclear waste

ST. Louis is the place where an underground landfill fire is burning near tons of nuclear waste


Cancer cluster map of St. Louis

5KDSK,

1 February, 2013

ST. LOUIS COUNTY (KSDK) - There are radioactive secrets beneath the banks and waters of a north St. Louis County creek that may be linked to a staggering number of cancers, illnesses and birth defects. In four square miles, there are three reported cases of conjoined twins and cancer rates that one data expert says is statistically impossible.

About two years ago, Janell Wright and several of her class of '88 McCluer North High School friends started wondering why so many of their peers were battling cancer.

"Where it got to be suspicious is when we had two friends diagnosed within a couple of months of each other with appendix cancer. And both people were told that is a one in a million cancer," said Wright.

Wright, an accountant and former auditor, started collecting data from her classmates. Soon, peers from neighboring schools reached out too.

"On Facebook, it just took off like wildfire. People started reporting their cancers and auto immune diseases," Wright said.

At first she found 30 cases. Within two months, she had data on 200 cases. Now, her maps have more than 700 cases in four square miles, including:

62 brain cancer cases 
27 leukemia cases 
26 lung cancer cases 
24 multiple sclerosis cases 
15 lymphoma cases 
10 pancreatic cancer cases 
3 conjoined twins

PDF: Cancer cluster map

Wright became equally alarmed when data showed some of her classmates' children had serious medical problems too.

"The children usually came down with brain cancer in the first 15 years of life, in addition, leukemia. In my peer group's children, there were several children who had to have their thyroid removed before they were 10-years-old," she said.

Strange coincidence or was something else at play? Another classmate, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, is an economist at Northwestern University. She ran her own analysis and found the likelihood of so many cancers among her high school peers was .00000001. Schanzenbach called it a statistical improbability.

Connected by Facebook, high school, and illness, the classmates made a startling discovery. The creek where they played as children carried a secret.

In the 1940s, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in downtown St. Louis purified thousands of tons of uranium to make the first atomic bombs. But the process also generated enormous amounts of radioactive waste. Sighting national security, the government quietly ordered the material moved to north St. Louis County in 1947.

Twenty-one acres of airport land became a dumping site where a toxic mixture of uranium, thorium, and radium sat uncovered or in barrels. In the 1960s, government documents noted contents from the rusting barrels were seeping into nearby Coldwater Creek. And by the 1990s, the government confirmed unsafe levels of radioactive materials in the water.

"You're having to grasp this idea that something was wrong. Nobody knew about it. Our parents didn't know, nobody knew," said Wright.

Wright and the 2,000 people now on the Facebook page Coldwater Creek Just the Facts Please wonder if they inhaled radioactive dust that blew in from the dump, or swallowed small amounts of toxic creek water.

Wright recently shared her data with the Army Corp of Engineers, which monitors the creek.

Members of the Facebook group want the CDC to investigate their data and determine if there is a cancer cluster. They are currently trying to build their case in hopes of getting to the truth.

Wright hopes she is wrong about the cancer cluster and link to Cold Water Creek. Her greatest fear is that she is right.

Based on the latest data, the Army Corp of Engineers reports there is no contamination threat to current homeowners. And monitoring of the creek continues.

Thirty people recently filed suit against Mallinckrodt and other companies. A spokesperson for Mallinckrodt, which is now owned by Covidian, said Mallinckrodt was not involved in the disposal or cleanup of the nuclear waste. 

Lynn Phillips from Mallinckrodt's Media Relations issued the following statement:" 

"The St. Louis Airport Site was used for disposal of demolition debris from buildings decommissioned and demolished nearly 50 years ago by a third party demolition contractor under the oversight of the U.S. government. Some of this debris was from buildings formerly used for uranium processing dating back to the 1940s at a Mallinckrodt site in St. Louis. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in coordination with the Department of Energy is now responsible for the environmental remediation of the St. Louis Airport Site, which includes Coldwater Creek, under its Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. This remediation is nearly complete. Mallinckrodt is not involved in the remediation activities that have been conducted at the St. Louis Airport Site. "

Click here to watch and read the second part of this investigation.

Warning on nuclear waste in St Louis

Pattonville Firefighter Issues Dire Warning on Nuclear Waste

A prominent fire commander is calling for the removal of nuclear waste from the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton as his department monitors an underground landfill fire nearby.

CBS St Louis

13 August, 2013

“We need to quit talking about it and take action because it is something that is very serious,” Pattonville Fire Protection District Assistant Chief Matt LaVanchy says.

According to LaVanchy, the entire St. Louis metropolitan region would be threatened with radioactive smoke if the fire at the Bridgeton Landfill were ever to reach the nuclear site at West Lake.

“This is something that has cost me a lost of sleep, not just because it’s in my backyard but there’s a lot of innocent people in this area,” he added. “If that fire ever gets to that radioactive material, which I’m not saying is going to happen, but there’s a potential there for something very tragic to happen in this area.”

If that occurred, according to LaVanchy, radioactive isotopes would leach onto smoke particles, carrying the airborne nuclear waste in whichever way the wind blew.

LaVanchy says in the short term, a trench needs to be dug to create a fire break. In the long term, he says the nuclear waste needs to be removed before another fire at the Bridgeton Landfill starts.

Later this week, the owners of the landfill are expected to present a revised plan to stop the fire from spreading toward the nuclear waste.

“It shouldn’t be in this community at all to begin with, let alone having a fire 1,000 feet away from it,” LaVanchy says. “There is just that much more sense of urgency with this.”

St Louis landfill fire moves closer to nuclear site

Professor: Explosion possible near St. Louis-area nuclear site — Official

Steam increasing from underground fire, may be moving closer to radioactive waste

News-Leader,

29 May, 2013

Dawn Chapman can put up with the noxious smell caused by smoldering trash in a landfill near her suburban St. Louis home. But if the burning creeps close to buried nuclear waste, she's ready to get out.

It's a problem that worries many people in this densely populated area near Lambert Airport, where the trash burns just 1,200 feet from another landfill that holds radioactive waste dating back to the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb in the 1940s.

"We're talking about just walking away from our home, honestly," said Chapman, a mother of three young special-needs children. She's not comfortable selling the house, even if she could.

"I'm a moral person. I can't just sell it to another family. If I feel like it's unsafe for my children, how could I do that to somebody else?" she asked.

Just below the surface of the Bridgeton Landfill, a layer of trash has been burning since at least 2010, fueled by an underground reaction of decomposing waste. The smoldering causes a noxious odor so overpowering that people in surrounding neighborhoods are reluctant to come out of their homes. Republic Services, the Phoenix-based owner of Bridgeton, is spending millions of dollars to ease the smell problem.

But the smell is just the most immediate concern. Environmentalists are alarmed by the possibility that the fire could someday reach the nuclear waste in the neighboring West Lake Landfill, owned by a subsidiary of Republic Services.

"I think what we're seeing is the possibility of a slow-moving disaster right before our eyes," said Ed Smith of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

Republic Services officials say that risk is remote, and they have a plan approved by state regulators, just in case.

At its current rate of movement, the underground smoldering would take more than 10 years to reach the edge of the West Lake landfill, according to company spokesman Richard Callow. He said preventative interceptor wells — underground structures that capture below-surface gasses — are already in place.

And if the fire did get close, Callow said, there are other options to shield the nuclear waste, including creating a barrier made of soil between the two landfills.

Missouri health officials and the state's Department of Natural Resources are monitoring the smoldering closely, Callow said, adding that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly stated that the fire poses no threat to the nuclear waste.

EPA spokesman Chris Whitley declined to comment on the risk, deferring to the DNR.

In a statement, DNR spokeswoman Renee Bungart did not directly address the risk issue but said the state agency is working closely with the company and the EPA to resolve concerns at the site.

Those concerns have a long history.

A St. Louis company, Mallinckrodt Chemical Co., processed uranium for the Manhattan Project starting in the 1940s. In 1973, nuclear waste was dumped at West Lake and mixed with other waste and soil. The EPA designated it a Superfund site in 1990.

The original cleanup plan called for leaving the waste on-site, covering it with rocks, clay, fill dirt and vegetation, and installing monitoring wells for groundwater. After an outcry from residents and politicians, the agency agreed "to step back and take another look at it," Whitley said. A new plan isn't likely until 2014.

As for the fire, digging up the smoldering waste would expose it to oxygen, which could stir up flames and make matters worse, Callow said.

Over the past several months, the smell grew so bad that some residents blamed illnesses on it. DePaul Health Center posted signs in waiting rooms on some particularly bad days explaining the odor to patients and visitors. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed suit in March against Republic Services, alleging violations of state environmental laws.

On May 22, work began to remove concrete pipes at the Bridgeton Landfill that could be allowing the smell to escape into the air. After the pipes are removed in mid-June, Republic Services will cap the landfill with a huge shell made of plastic and high-tech mesh.

The cap should help the smell, but it won't end the smoldering.

At the time of his lawsuit, Koster said, the smoldering did not appear to be moving toward the nuclear waste. But six weeks later, Assistant Attorney General Joe Bindbeutel said new evidence, including increasing amounts of steam in the "neck" area between the two sites, showed some potential movement in that direction.

Smith also cited temperature monitoring that showed rising levels of heat closer to the nuclear waste.

If the nuclear waste caught fire, experts say it would not cause any sort of meltdown, but it could pose a health risk for nearby residents.

Heat from any fire at the nuclear site could spark an explosion in methane pockets or buried gas cylinders, throwing radioactive particles into the air, said Bob Criss, professor of earth and planetary science at Washington University in St. Louis, who has studied environmental concerns at the landfill.

The fire could also create "subsurface voids" that might expose nuclear waste to wind and rain — especially problematic because the landfill sits in the Missouri River flood plain, Criss said.

Elevated levels of radiation have been detected in some groundwater sampling at West Lake. But radiation in groundwater poses no health risk "unless a person is actually drinking the groundwater," Whitley said.

Radium, a highly radioactive element, often occurs naturally in groundwater throughout the Midwest, he added.

The EPA on Wednesday released a report showing that the nuclear waste has not spread beyond its current landfill, according to information from a flyover of the site using a plane capable of detecting gamma radiation emissions. That aerial survey sought to identify areas of underground burning, but those scans were inconclusive, Whitley said.

Remote or not, the possibility of nuclear contamination so close to her backyard keeps Chapman up at night. The stay-at-home mom administers a Facebook page on the landfill problems. She hears from many residents near the landfill who don't believe the claims that things are under control.

"The bottom line is it's very serious," Chapman said. "What's happening up here is not something that has ever been encountered before. They've had landfill fires and nuclear waste, but never in such close proximity."

Yet another oil pipeline rupture

Fresh ExxonMobil pipeline spill hits Missouri

While questions over the severity of ExxonMobil’s March 29 oil spill in Mayflower, Arkansas still remain, the same pipeline has now ruptured, this time to the north, in Missouri.

RT,

2 May, 2013

The 70-year-old Pegasus pipeline, which released thousands of barrels of tar sands oil in Arkansas, has now caused another, albeit far smaller incident in Ripley County, Missouri, 200 miles north of Mayflower, Arkansas.

A resident notified ExxonMobil after spotting a patch of oil and dead vegetation in their yard outside the town of Doniphan, according to Reuters.

Luckily, unlike the spill that is still ongoing in Mayflower, the latest breach seems so far to be minor, with an estimated one barrel of crude oil having been leaked. According to an Exxon spokeswoman the cleanup operation there was “close to completion.”

Originally built in the late 1940s, the Pegasus is now the subject of severe scrutiny, as many environmentalists argue that the increased corrosive impact of transporting tar sands oil presents a greater concern than other forms of oil. It is worth noting that the pipeline was shut down following the Arkansas spill, and leaked in Missouri despite being out of operation.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is ultimately responsible for approving the Pegasus pipeline's restart. That agency did not immediately respond to Reuters on Wednesday regarding the Missouri leak, and whether that may delay reactivation.

On April 26 the PHMSA released a new report on the Mayflower spill that shed light on several new details. Of the approximately 5,000 barrels of crude oil involved in the pipeline breach, less than half had been cleaned up by ExxonMobil.

The report also pointed to the contamination of surface water, accounting for 2,000 barrels of oil located in ditches and a cove south of nearby Lake Conway. Though the latest report does not seem to indicate that oil reached the larger body of Lake Conway, an independent study conducted by Opflex Solutions indicated otherwise.