Legalectric

This has been in the news a lot lately due to the Missouri Attorney General’s release of reports that are part of a lawsuit against the owners of the landfill, Republic Services, which, the AG states has “poisoned its neighbors’ groundwater and vegetation.”  Great… just great…  What I get out of this is that the fire’s movement towards the nuclear waste is a concern, but there are already significant problems in the here and now to deal with.

Site Q on the map above is right by the Candlewood Inn hotel that I stay at during BaronFest, held at the home of a friend in Maryland Heights just south of the bottom center of this map.  Here’s Kady, settled into the hotel:

The reports released are pretty disturbing.  Here are some maps from the Westlake Landfill Tree Core Analysis – Burken/Usman showing elevated U-235 in tree core samples:

And here’s a similar map for Thorium, but note this concentration is to the north:

And from the same report, check out these carcinogens in the core samples:

And from the Field Inspection Reports – Stark, visible leachate outbreak — it’s clearly not contained:

The primary documents from the Missouri Attorney General’s site:

• West Lake Landfill Organic Pollutant Phytoforensic Assessment – Burken
• Westlake Landfill Phytoforensic Assessment using Gamma Spectroscopy – Usman
• Westlake Landfill Tree Core Analysis – Burken/Usman
• Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill Groundwater Investigation – Price/Wronkiewicz
• Subsurface Self Sustaining Reaction Incident – Sperling/Abedini
• Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill Incident – Thalhamer
• Field Inspection Reports – Stark
• Bridgeton Landfill Downwind Odor Assessment – Wright
• Feasibility Study – Groundwater Remediation – Hemmen

It’s fall, the sun is rising on the other side of the house and bluff now, and I’m not ready!  Getting out to enjoy fall as much as possible, and then Little Sadie and I are heading to St. Louis soon for BaronFest III (didn’t have one last year).  Maybe down to Arkansas to catch fall later!  This is the first BaronFest where I don’t have a German Shepherd, and I’m not sure how Little Sadie will fare.

It’s hard to feel motivated to work with all this transmission going up here in Minnesota.  Earlier in the summer, we went down through Wabasha, and south of Wabasha where CapX Hampton – La Crosse cuts across the Mississippi River to Alma, through La Crosse and checked out the Briggs Road substation, host to CapX and Badger Coulee transmission, to Cassville and Dubuque and back up further west, a tour of electric infrastructure.

Don’t they have enough?  If they’re shutting down this coal plant, why would they need transmission?  How about using that capacity… oh, right, they get that 12.38% or thereabouts for building transmission, that’s their primary revenue source these days!

Time for a break…

Until then, I can vicariously enjoy my SiL’s trek along El Camino, and transmission lines too, in Spain.  Go, Jeanne, go!!!