Missouri State Park Set to 'Get the Lead Out'

by Duane Craig

Missouri is cleaning up lead contamination

A state park in Missouri moves a step closer to “getting the lead out.” Literally. St. Joe Park is Missouri’s third largest state park and is used by the public for outdoor recreation. It has 8,238 acres, of which 1,240 acres make up the Federal Tailings Pile Superfund Site.

A company once known as St. Joe Minerals Corporation mined for lead and milled it on the property for 40 years from 1932 to 1972. Then, it gave the land to the state in 1976. What’s telling about this contaminated site is the levels of lead in the soil, which in places reaches 20,000 parts per million. There is also a secondary problem of contaminants found in nearby water, sediment and in the fish.

Now, Doe Run Resources Corporation, (the new name of the St. Joe Minerals Corporation), and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources have agreed to address the remediation jointly and are supposed to provide a draft plan of action to the Environmental Protection Agency by sometime in May. The estimated cost of removing the contamination is $7 million, and most of that will be covered by the now-bankrupt American Smelting and Refining Company LLC. During the bankruptcy proceedings of that company, funds were set aside to repair contamination in parks across the country.

Read the story here.