Bridgeton Landfill: Rolling Stone Magazine Puts Spotlight on Underground Fire

The fugitive emissions and underground fire stemming from the Bridgeton Landfill in North St. Louis County has received national coverage from an article published  Friday in Rolling Stone Magazine. The article by Steven Hsieh is called “St. Louis is Burning.” The reporter provides an investigative look into the problems surrounding the landfill and considers the long terms implications of the toxic mess currently smoldering in St. Louis’ backyard.

“There's a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It's invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as "rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer." Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. "It smells like dead bodies," observes another local….

Click here to read the full article on the Rolling Stone's website.

Bridgeton Landfill Update: Firm Hosts Informational Meeting As Foul Smell Continues

Simmons Law Firm attorneys and staff will meet with concerned citizens again this coming Tuesday, Feb. 26, to share information about the offensive odors coming from the Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill. The meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the Sports Café at 3579 Pennridge Dr., Bridgeton, MO 63044.

In recent weeks, residents have complained about horrible smells similar to that of dead animals coming from the Bridgeton Landfill. KMOV and other local news outlets have reported that landfill officials expect the smell to continue for several weeks while the landfill undergoes improvements.

The meeting will review residents’ legal rights as property owners and renters living near the landfill. Residents have reported experiencing side effects from the odor including headaches, watery eyes and migraines.

The odor could be linked to a landfill fire burning underneath the ground at the site. The odors have been linked to a fire at the St. Louis County landfill. This raises additional concerns as the Bridgton Landfill fire is believed to be located near radioactive waste dumped in the adjacent West Lake Landfill.

Simmons Firm attorneys will discuss safety concerns surrounding the bad smells coming from the St. Louis Landfill fire and what residents can do to protect their legal rights. 

If you live in the Bridgeton area and are concerned about the health impacts of the Bridgeton Landfill, please contact the Simmons Firm for more information.

Residents Concerned About High Rate of Cancers, Illnesses Linked to Coldwater Creek

There are a staggering number of cancers, illnesses and birth defects within a 4-mile radius in North St. Louis County, according to a KSDK Channel 5 News report that aired last night. A data expert says the incidence rates are statically impossible.

The news report tells the story of Janell Wright and several of her high school classmates from McClure North who became concerned with the number of classmates being diagnosed with cancer. They started a Facebook group to keep track.

Wright started with 30 cases and tracked them on a map of North County. Within two months, the number had grown to 200. Now she has 700 self-reported cases within 4 square miles. The illnesses her classmates reported include brain cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, multiple sclerosis, lymphoma, pancreatic cancer, birth defects and more.

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, another McClure North graduate and now an economist at Northwestern University, ran her own report. She told reporters her calculations showed the likelihood of so many cancers occurring among her high school classmates was a statistical improbability.

Residents believe the cancer cluster is linked to radioactive waste processed by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works and dumped on 21-acres near the St. Louis airport. The waste was stored in barrels or in open piles. In the 1960s, government records showed the barrels were rusting and leaking into Coldwater Creek - the same creek that runs through the neighborhoods of many North County communities.

Lawsuits are now being filed alleging the contamination of Coldwater Creek is linked to the unusually high rate of cancer in the community.

Tonight, a follow-up investigation will run during the 10 o’clock news hour detailing how a portion of the radioactive waste was transported to West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton and the troubling concerns residents are facing there.

KSDK to Air Report on Coldwater Creek Contamination

The two-part series to air on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 during Channel 5 News

KSDK Channel Five News will air a two-part series about the contamination of Coldwater Creek in north St. Louis County this coming week. The investigative piece will air during the channel’s 10 o’clock news hour and provide a further look into residents’ concerns that nuclear waste dumped in the creek decades ago is now causing a variety of illnesses, including cancer.

As early as the 1940s, radioactive waste from uranium processing at the former Mallinckrodt Chemical Plant in downtown St. Louis was dumped at one of two storage facilities near the St. Louis Lambert Airport. Coldwater Creek bordered both sites. The waste was stored in drums that later leaked or was dumped into one of two piles. The runoff from the unsecured storage areas flowed into area ditches and the creek.

In 1989, both sites were designated Superfund sites by the Environmental Protection Agency. Cleanup is expected to finish sometime this year. However, hundreds of residents have reporting an unusual number of illnesses in their community like leukemia, multiple myeloma thyroid cancer, lung cancer and more. Many are now questioning the link between the illnesses and the creek.

Be sure to tune into News Channel 5 this Thursday and Friday night to learn more about this serious public health hazard.

If you believe you or someone you love may have been harmed by contamination in Coldwater Creek, click here to learn more.

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.

Roxana Village Takes on Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips Over Chemical Contamination of Community

Yesterday our law firm filed suit on behalf of the Village of Roxana against Shell Oil Company, ConocoPhillips, and WRB Refining LP, alleging toxins such as benzene were released into the surrounding residential area, polluting the groundwater, land and air of the small community of less than 2,000 residents. Attorney Mike Stewart I have been investigating this case since last summer.

In an Alton Telegraph article, Stewart talked about how this case is personal for our firm.

Simmons Firm in Alton owner John Simmons graduated from Roxana High School, and the firm also has several ties to the community, with one of the attorneys living there; so for him, it is personal, said Simmons attorney Michael Stewart.

"We have become very close to the village of Roxana and the homeowners, residents and taxpayers through this process," Stewart said. "The village has rights, and so do the others. The village came to us with a problem, and this is where the road has taken us."

Click to read more from the Telegraph >>>

Click here to read coverage by St. Louis Public Radio >>>

“Standing” to Sue: Homeowners To Have Their Day in Court Against ‘Backdrop of National Housing Crisis’

Almost two years ago several homeowners filed lawsuits accusing eight major homebuilders of causing them serious financial injuries.  These injuries came to light when the housing market crashed and these normal, responsible homeowners saw their communities deteriorate around them.  

They were traditional homebuyers who bought homes in new developments advertised as “stable” and “traditional”; they were owner-occupants in communities where homes were not supposed to be sold to investors.  But it turned out that the vision they bought into was just a glossy sales campaign:  in fact, the developers had filled the communities with unqualified buyers who stood no chance of weathering an economic downturn.  

Taking action, our clients filed lawsuits alleging that the builder/developers deceived them about the nature and quality of the communities they were developing and of the homes they were building, marketing, and selling.  Our clients overpaid for what they really got.  And now that the curtain has been drawn back on the housing crisis, it’s clear that their homes and communities are less desirable to live in and suffered home value declines exacerbated by the true nature of these communities.  Developments flooded with high-risk borrowers have yielded a landscape of foreclosures, short sales, and blight. 

But there was one problem:  the homebuilders argued that because our clients hadn’t sold their homes, they hadn’t actually suffered an injury.  Legally speaking, they argued that the plaintiffs didn’t have “standing” to bring a lawsuit – they assert that responsible people who have stayed in their homes haven’t actually lost anything in this crash.  

Last week one of the most influential courts in America disagreed, allowing the homeowners’ suit to continue and, in the process, issuing one of the most recent appellate-level pronouncements on the Constitutional doctrine of standing. 

As reported by Reuters:

Against what the court called "the backdrop of the national housing crisis," the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said last Wednesday a lower court erred in concluding the homeowners lacked standing to pursue their fraud claims.

You can read the full ruling here. 

The Ninth Circuit’s opinion debunked once and for all the strained argument that homeowners somehow could not claim they were harmed merely because they had not yet “realized” a loss through sale of their homes at a loss.   As Americans know all too well, declining real estate values have an immediate financial impact on people’s lives even without a sale. 

Tracing Supreme Court precedent as well as decisions from the Ninth Circuit and other circuits, the court concluded definitively that “a present decrease in the economic value of one’s home is a cognizable and concrete injury-in-fact.”

The Ninth Circuit’s opinion also rejected the homebuilders’ argument that homeowners could not claim an injury based on being misled into paying more for their homes than the homes were worth.  No better was the argument that homeowners weren’t wronged because they had received the “benefit of their bargain” and that buyers merely paid prices in line with what the market supported.  The court noted that these homeowners allege that the market for homes in these communities was set not by competition or on the merits, but by the homebuilders’ misrepresentations about what it was they were selling.  

This is an early victory for our clients and other homebuyers who, pursuing the American dream of home ownership, became victims of opportunistic players in the housing industry.  We look forward to returning to the trial court. We intend to prove the allegations made in these cases and hold those who profited from this wrongdoing accountable. 

For more information on joining the lawsuit, click here.