Coldwater Creek: Nuclear Waste Pollutes North St. Louis County Creek for Half Century

Having a creek or other body of water in your back yard can increase your property value and improve quality of life. But when that creek becomes contaminated with toxic substances unknown to property owners, the results can be devastating.  

This is what residents believe happened to Coldwater Creek in North St. Louis County. The creek starts near Lambert Airport and runs through the communities of Berkeley, Florissant and Blackjack before joining the Missouri River. Since the 1940s, waste from two nuclear storage facilities near the airport is believed to have drained into the creek.

Mallinckrodt Chemical Company processed uranium for the Department of Defense in the 1940s. Nuclear by products were generated from the manufacturing process. That waste was then transported from the company’s downtown site to two locations in North County near the airport. They are called the St. Louis Airport Site and the Hazelwood Interim Storage Site.  Coldwater Creek borders both locations.

Today, both sites are being remediated by the Army Corps of Engineers. The dump sites were designated a superfund site in 1989 by the Environmental Protection Agency. Since then, various efforts had been made to clean up the contamination. The entire project is slated to finish this coming year.

While the cleanup is an important step, it does not help those who have already been exposed. They maybe eligible to file a coldwater creek lawsuit. New reports have uncovered that North St. Louis County has a high rate of cancer than the rest of the county and even the state. Many residents believe this increased rate of cancer diagnosis and other illnesses to their exposures to the waste in the creek.

Cancers believed to be linked to toxic exposure to nuclear waste are:

• Lung cancer
• Acute Mylogenous Leukemia (ALM)
• Other types of Leukemias
• Multiple Myeloma Thyroid Cancer
• and Others

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with cancer after having direct, repeated contact with Coldwater Creek, then you may have grounds to file a coldwater creek lawsuit against those responsible for the creek’s contamination. 

The Coldwater Creek Lawyers at the Simmons Firm have extensive experience litigating toxic exposure lawsuits. Learn more about filing a Coldwater Creek Lawsuit here.

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