B&K Construction – The first secret city (2024)

How Bridgeton ended up spending $350,000 to build a new playground at the city’s radioactively-contaminated ball fields.

Bundled against the cold and appropriately masked, representatives of the St. Louis Community Foundation and Bridgeton Parks Department joined Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs and Missouri Sen. Brian Williams January 22 for the opening of the new $350,000 playground at the Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex.

In his remarks at the dedication ceremony, Williams praised the city’s generous expenditure. “This playground opens up even more opportunities for families to enjoy community and get fresh air,” Williams said. “This is a community with its eye on the future, where families can live and play safely because this city invests in its people.”

Unfortunately, the senator omitted inconvenient details such as the radioactively contaminated soil at the site.

The city of Bridgeton paid for the playground with a grant from the Bridgeton Landfill Community Project Fund, which was set up in 2018 to dole out the multi-million-dollar settlement agreed to by the state of Missouri and Republic Services for the trash company’s environmental violations at the nearby West Lake Superfund site, which is also contaminated with nuclear waste dating back to the Manhattan Project.

As a part of that unprecedented deal, the office of then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley — acting on behalf of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources — handed over $12.5 million to the St. Louis Community Foundation, a private charity. Under the terms of the agreement, the private foundation has sole responsibility for distributing public funds to eligible, non-profit community organizations within four miles of the landfill.

The state senator’s decision to focus his remarks on the future is understandable. But his optimistic vision turned a blind eye on BMAC’s dark past, omitting any reference to hazardous materials at the site.

The complicated history related to the city’s ownership of the property dates back more than a half century, when Bridgeton purchased the land from an investment group headed by the owner of B&K Construction, the same company that illegally dumped tons of radioactively-contaminated soil at West Lake Landfill.

A decade ago community activists began raising concerns over the potential risks posed by children playing ball at BMAC, citing its toxic link to the nearby landfill. This created tensions between some residents and Bridgeton city officials, who claimed there was no cause for alarm.

Ultimately, the EPA acted as the arbiter of the dispute and sided with city officials, reassuring the public that there was no cause for alarm.

In 2014, EPA Region VII administrator Karl Brooks held a press conference at Bridgeton City Hall with then-Mayor Conrad Bowers to advise the public that their fears were unwarranted. Brooks based his conclusion on test results that had yet to be released. He blamed the press for causing a panic, and said that the agency’s calculations were based on science.

But EPA documents later released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal Brooks’ comments were deceptive. The internal agency emails indicate test results cited by Brooks to bolster public confidence were themselves questioned by an EPA official days before Brooks’ pronounced the ball fields safe.

Cecilia Tapia, director of Environmental Sciences and Technology for EPA Region 7, cited differing action levels for radioactive isotopes and advised her colleagues that they should consider swapping one standard over another. Internal EPA emails released under the Freedom of Information Act show that

In her email message, Tapia cited the EPA’s supplemental feasibility study’s “action levels,” but added this caveat: “It may be more appropriate to use the SLAPS numbers.”

Using one set of numbers instead of the other could have effected the EPA’s decision on BMAC.

SLAPS is the acronym for the 21.7 acre St. Louis Airport Site, a radioactively-contaminated property originally under the control of the U.S. Department of Energy. In 1997, that clean up was handed over to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has authority over it and other sites in the St. Louis area through the DOE’s Formerly Utilized Site Remediation Program (FUSRAP).

DOE’s permissible levels are generally stricter than the EPA’s corresponding standards.

Tapia’s comment is subject to interpretation, but any way it’s sliced the numbers cited in the related email chain among EPA contractors and agency officials show one undeniable fact: The EPA had verified through its own testing that there were radiation levels of concern at BMAC, but then acted to downplay the significance of its own findings.

Thousands of KATY Trail users pass by the abandoned Hamburg Quarry without being aware of it. A former quarryman believes what they don’t know about the site and its checkered history should concern them.

Cyclists whizzing by the abandoned Hamburg Quarry on the KATY Trail in St. Charles County rarely slow down to take a gander at its sheer limestone walls or the placid waters below. Most aren’t even aware the historic excavation site is within a stone’s throw of the popular bicycle path.

That’s largely because the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the KATY’s caretaker, doesn’t advertise the site. The Missouri Conservation Commission — the current owner — also doesn’t promote the scenic spot. The University of Missouri, which once counted the property as an asset, isn’t inclined to acknowledge its past connections to the location, either. The Department of Energy and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose jurisdictions touch on the quarry, seem to have forgotten about the place, too.

It is as if the history of the abandoned quarry sank to the bottom of the submerged pit along with the state and federal government’s institutional memory.

But quarryman Kenneth Kerpash hasn’t forgotten the place. Hamburg Quarry is where he remembers seeing thousands of rusty, leaky barrels stored back in 1972. He also recalls being told in so many words to look the other way. The scene is permanently chiseled in his mind’s eye.

The 65-year-old retired Teamster truck driver from Troy, Mo. has carried the weight of that memory ever since. For a long time, he didn’t talk about it, worried his knowledge might jeopardize his job. He stopped working for the quarry operator in 1984, and his unease ebbed.

But in In February, the trucker’s concerns reemerged. After decades of indecision, the EPA finally announced its proposed remedy for the the radioactively-contaminated West Lake Quarry and Landfill in North St. Louis County. Since taking over the site in 1990, the agency has neglected to clean up nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project that was illegally dumped in 1973.

For Kerpash, the West Lake and Hamburg sites are linked for one simple reason: both were operated by the same company — West Lake Quarry and Materials Co. — his former employer.He drove a heavy truck for the company at both quarries from 1971 to 1984.

Kerpash doesn’t claim to know what the barrels at Hamburg Quarry contained. But based on what he does know about the nearby Superfund site that bears his former employer’s name — he suspects the worst. Though the two sites share a common history, there is one stark difference. While knowledge of the troubled West Lake Superfund site has garnered media attention in recent years, the Hamburg Quarry has largely been forgotten.

“There was probably 2,000-plus 55-gallon barrels,” he says, referring to the dump site he observed at Hamburg Quarry. “The bottoms was deteriorating and rotting. I asked one of the operators about it and he said, ‘We’re not loading over by them so don’t worry about it.'”

In hindsight, Kerpash believes his exposure to hazardous materials at Hamburg and West Lake Quarry may be the cause of his family’s chronic health problems. He has no way of knowing for sure, but he now suspects he may have brought the contamination home with him on his soiled work clothes.

“… My wife and my daughter … washed my clothes. You never give it a thought. But you never know what you carried in,” he says. “My wife [now] has stage four ovarian and paraovarian cancer. My daughter has had cancer twice. I’ve had tumors taken out of my back and large colon.

“If I can can help somebody’s life or kids [from] problems that my family’s had, I want to help them to get this cleaned up,” he says.“I think the EPA has been holding back, and I think they need to get up and get going,” says Kerpash. “It needs to be cleaned up not in ten or 15 years. It needs to be cleaned up now.”

Kerspash’s account raises the question whether radioactively-contaminated waste may also have been quietly disposed of at the West Lake Quarry and Materials Co.’s Hamburg Quarry operation — which the company leased from the University of Missouri.

Mallinckrodt Chemical Works’ former Weldon Spring uranium processing facility is 1.5 miles north of Hamburg Quarry. From 1957 to 1966, Mallinckrodt processed uranium there under contract with the Atomic Energy Commission. Waste from the operation was stored on site or dumped at nearby Weldon Spring Quarry. Mallinckrodt’s St. Louis plant also dumped radioactive debris from its St. Louis facility at the Weldon Spring Quarry.

Sharing similar geologic characteristics, it’s easy to get the Weldon Spring and Hamburg Quarries confused. Both are within walking distance of each other via the state-owned KATY Trail. The difference is that Weldon Spring Quarry, which remains under the watchful eye of the Department of Energy, was drained and cleaned up in the 1990s, while Hamburg Quarry remains largely off the radar. Hamburg Quarry is not identified by name on Google Maps and the Missouri Conservation Commission map for the area identifies it only as a “restricted area.”

The Department of Energy ultimately funded a 16-year clean up of the Weldon Spring Quarry along with Mallinckrodt’s Weldon Spring uranium-processing plant, which was completed in 2002 at a cost that soared to nearly $1 billion. The waste from both locations is now stored at the former plant site in an in a giant “containment cell,” which now is one of the highest elevations n St. Charles County.

In 1996, the DOE published a cost-benefit analysis related to the removal of radioactively- contaminated soil that had migrated from the uranium plant’s perimeter, flowing downhill. The study includes a map that pinpoints hot spots on a creek that drains into the Missouri River near Hamburg Quarry (see inset).

Another part of the DOE’s clean up involved treating the radioactively-contaminated effluents at the uranium plant and discharging the waste via a pipeline into the Missouri River. That pipeline’s terminus is located directly across the KATY Trail from the Hamburg Quarry.

Kerpash’s wariness seems reasonable when juxtaposed with his former employer’s dodgy history and the context of the situation. The most striking and obvious detail is that the Hamburg Quarry is hemmed in on three sides by documented radioactive waste sites. Then there’s the fact that company that operated the quarry is a known polluter. In addition, the Missouri Conservation Commission map of the area designates it as a restricted area. For more than 70 years, nobody has lived within miles of the place, but there are plans in the works to develop a subdivision on nearby property owned by the University of Missouri.

There is a good reason why more than 17,000 acres of prime real estate within 30 miles of St. Louis has remained undeveloped and mostly uninhabited: It’s against the law to live here.

Under DOE guidelines, recreational use of the area falls within accepted exposure limits, but full-time habitation is prohibited. Potential drinking water contamination has also long been a contested issue due to the proximity of St. Charles County’s well fields. Monitoring wells dot the landscape, and there continues to be periodic government testing of the groundwater.

Core samples of the limestone at Hamburg Quarry taken decades ago by the DOE did not raise regulatory eyebrows, but that doesn’t necessarily give it a clean bill of health. Available online data about the Hamburg Quarry is limited. What’s at the bottom of the quarry lake is anybody’s guess. If the thousands of rusty barrels that Kerpash says he observed there were later removed, there is no record of where they were taken.

When Kerpash spoke at an EPA meeting held in February, he was interviewed by members of the media afterward. But months later, he feels abandoned. His message was largely ignored.

Kerpash wants answers. But his allegation only raises questions for regulatory authorities that never have seemed too keen on resurrecting the past. Turning a blind eye to the region’s longstanding radioactive waste crisis is nothing new. Mass denial has enveloped the issue from the beginning, spurred by official waffling and the ambivalent attitudes of government, business, and the news media — which accepts government press releases as more reliable than eye-witness accounts.

In this case, however, there is no official version. Kerpash stands alone. Despite the lack of government confirmation of his account, he has not wavered.

“I know what I seen,” says Kerpash. “It’s the truth.”

Is the EPA under-estimating the depth of the problem at its West Lake Superfund Site?

In 1979-1980 Gary Schneiderhauled Bridgeton municipal waste to West Lake Landfill for BFI. He says the quarry pit was 75-feet deep then — seven years after B&K Construction illegally dumped tons of radioactive waste at the same site.

The EPA has recommended excavating and cleaning up the same site to a maximum of 16-feet.

Five years after B&K Construction illegally dumped Cotter Corp.’s radioactive waste at the West Lake Landfill, the two companies continued doing dirty business with each other.

In July 1978, Cotter Corp., the owner of the radioactively-contaminated site on Latty Avenue, solicited a bid from B&K Construction to “decontaminate” 14.5 acres at the location in Hazelwood. B&K proposed doing the job for morethan $492,000, according to a company record made public today by the Environmental Archives.

Five years earlier, in 1973, B&K had dumped radioactive waste belonging to Cotter at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton. The EPA Superfund site has yet to be cleaned up.

Cotter’s proposal was broken into two parts. B&K offered toremediate the north end of the 3.5-acre Jarboe Property at 9200 Latty Avenue for $139,900, and bid more than $355,900 to clean up 11 acres at Cotter’s property next door.

The proposal called for hauling the radioactive waste materials back to the 22-acre airport site, where they had originally been stored years earlier.

An investigation by the Atomic Energy Commission discovered the illegal dumping at West Lake in 1974. Though the AEC found violations of its regulations had occurred, neither company was held accountable for its actions.

A 1981 report prepared for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency raises more questions about the origins of the radioactive waste at the controversial West Lake Landfill Superfund site, including who dumped it and when.

No doubt exists that B&K Construction Co. hauled more than 40,000 tons of radioactive material from Cotter Corp.’s Latty Avenue storage site in Hazelwood, Mo. and illegally dumped it at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo. between July and October of 1973.

But a 1981 government report obtained by the Environmental Archives now suggests some of the nuclear weapons waste at the landfill was quietly disposed of years earlier. Forty-five years later it remains a mystery where the latter nuke waste originated or who dumped it

The report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, is based on a 1980 site investigation by the Radiation Management Corp., a Nuclear Regulatory Commission contractor. The report states that the then-landfill superintendent recalled with certainty that the Latty Avenue waste was disposed on approximately two acres in the southern portion of the landfill.

Vernon Fehr, the superintendent who had first-hand knowledge of the landfill operations for the time periods in question, also said with certainty that none of the radioactive materials from Latty Avenue were dumped in the other contaminated part of the landfill, which is comprised of approximately 8 acres in the northeast section.

The NRC report states, “the second area is at least 10 years old (in 1981), and no one had any idea what radioactive material might be present there.” If that timeline is correct, it means large volumes of radioactive waste were secretly dumped at the landfill at least two years prior to B&K arriving on the scene.

Radiation Management based its findings on both the landfill manager’s testimony and a 1978 aerial survey of the landfill by EG&G engineering firm. The aerial survey discovered radioactive contamination above background on 2.6 acres acres in the southern part of the landfill and also present on 8 acres in the northeast portion of the site.

Current attention has been directed mainly at area of the landfill nearest the underground fire, which is burning at the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill.

The eight acres in the northeast sector of the site include a toxic stew of chemical waste in addition to the radioactive materials. The mixed contaminants are known to be migrating off site and leaking into the aquifer. The landfill is in the flood plain, approximately 1.5 miles away from the Missouri River.

The exact nature of the all radioactively-contaminated materials and their precise locations remains uncertain because the EPA has failed to fully characterize the site since taking over the clean up in 1990. In short, despite untold numbers of various tests and surveys over the years, a comprehensive grid test of the entire 200-acre Superfund site has never been conducted.

An Aborted Federal Probe Into Labor Racketeering in the 1970s Leaves Questions Unanswered

There are those who sometimes jokingly refer to the EPA Superfund site in Bridgeton as the “Tony Soprano Landfill,” but it may be no laughing matter.

By his own admission, the late president of the West Lake Quarry Co., had dealings with reputed St. Louis underworld figure Anthony “Nino” Parrino for 20 years.

Moreover, FBI records recently released under the Freedom of Information Act indicate Parrino fell under scrutiny of a federal labor-racketeering probe in part due to his ties to St. Louis Teamsters Local 682.

Parrino became a federal law enforcement target in July 1973, according to the FBI records. He first appeared on the bureau’s radar ostensibly because he attended the funeral of the late John Vitale’s wife. Vitale was then second in command of the mafia here.

Coincidentally, B&K Construction also began dumping radioactive waste at West Lake Landfill in July 1973. No evidence has been unearthed since then showing a direct connection between the two events.

But that may be because the federal labor-racketeering probe here hit a wall.

Any chance of connecting the dots ended in the late 1970s when political pressure from U.S. Rep. William Clay Sr. ultimately killed the federal Anti-Crime Task Force investigation in St. Louis.

Parrino remained a 682 official until 1991. By then the Teamsters International Union had been placed under the custody of the U.S. Department of Justice due to alleged corruption inside the leadership of the union.

Citing his ties to organized crime, the feds finally removed Parrino from his union post along with Local 682 boss Robert Sansone.

St. Louis politicians and business leaders opposed the federal action and stood firmly behind the two. Among those publicly defending Parrino and Sansone was William J. McCullough, the retired president of West Lake Quarry and Materials Co. and West Lake Ready Mix Co.

In a letter to the editor published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McCullough lauded both labor officials’ professional ethics. McCullough’s letter indicates that Parrino was involved in representing union interests with the quarry owners from 1965 to 1985.

It’s impossible to know what may have happened had the federal anti-crime task force not been shut down.

McCullough’s Oct. 10, 1991 letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reprinted in full below:

The recent coverage of Bob Sansone, the president of Teamsters Local 682 and now vice presidential candidate of the international, prompts writing this letter.

For a period of 20 years until 1985, I was a senior officer and finally president of the West Lake Quarry and Material Co. and the West Lake Ready Mix Co. Labor relations was a key part of my job. We worked with labor leaders from 12 different unions, and dealings with Sansone and Anthony Parrino were always done in a professional manner.

Both Sansone or Parrino entered any grievance with an open mind and pursued it with diligence for their members. When the employee was right, both men worked for the maximum benefit for the employee; when the company was right, they pursued a course in the best interests of the employee, yet were fair to the company.

Never were improper pressure or threats put forth by either person. Both were well versed in labor law.

I do not know what Parrino’s alleged ties were or are to any other organization. I do know that I trusted him completely to deal fairly with us for the good of both the employees and the company.

William McCullough

Kirkwood