County Government Monitoring of Weldon Spring Cleanup
An update from the Division of Environmental Services

St. Charles County Government continues to work to make sure that our citizen's health and the environment are protected. The Department of Community Health and the Environment, Division of Environmental Services, pays very close attention to the cleanup of the Weldon Spring site being carried out by the federal government.

One of the main areas we watch is the water supply well field used by the county water plant. The plant pumps raw (untreated) water from the floodplain of the Missouri River. The County has used the wells and plant for over thirty years. Purified drinking water is piped to several of the water districts and public utilities that serve some of our homes and businesses.

The abandoned quarry hole that was used as a dump for waste from the old Federal Government TNT explosives plant and, later, the Uranium processing programs has been completely cleaned up. It is being filled with compacted dirt. Because this quarry sits very close to the part of the river floodplain where the water supply wells are, the federal, state and county governments had test wells drilled into the area of shallow groundwater. In Fact, there are over fifty wells placed around the entire cleanup project. They are tested at least four times a year by the Department of Energy.

Besides the frequent sampling done by the federal government, your County Division of Environmental Services takes testing samples from a few of the test wells closest to our county water supply wells. We also test the actual water that comes out of the water supply wells. This is the same water that is purified and distributed as drinking water by the water plant.

We send the collected samples to private labs for testing. We review and keep track of all of the results and report them to the State, to the utilities that buy the finished drinking water, and to any other interested parties. These test results are public record. Since the beginning of this testing program more than ten years ago, we have never seen any contamination of the water from the supply wells by uranium or any other toxic chemical.

We intend to continue our testing and to insist that the state and federal government continue testing. If any of the testing in the future ever shows a sign of even slight contamination, the federal government would take responsibility for more cleanup of the groundwater, provide treatment of our pumping wells, or the relocating of the supply wells to an area further upstream.

We want to be able to reassure you, not just now but into the future, that the water you drink is safe and of very high quality. This is a high public health and environmental quality priority for our County Department of Community Health and the Environment.

We hope you find this information helpful and invite you to visit us on the web (www.scchealth.org), talk to us on the phone (636-949-7415) or visit in person (County Administration Building, 201 N. Second Street, St. Charles Missouri 63301) to learn more about the Weldon Spring cleanup projects or other environmental topics of interest. You can also correspond with us by mail at the above address. When you visit us on the web us can use the home page "search" option to find anything related to Weldon Spring.

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