Cold Water Creek


Cold Water Creek is a tributary of the Missouri River in St. Louis County in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is known for having been contaminated with radioactive wastes.

Location

The creek begins in a small spring-fed lake south of Lambert International Airport, then flows 19 miles north and east through the towns of Florissant, Hazelwood, Black Jack, Spanish Lake, St. Ann, and Berkeley. According to St. Louis Magazine, "It runs past schools, golf courses, and soccer fields."
The creek terminates in the Missouri River between the Lewis Bridge and the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area.

History

The name "Cold Water Creek" is a translation of the original French name Rivière de L'eau Froide. The Spaniards called it Rio Fernando, Spanish for "Ferdinand River." The French also called it Riviere aux Biches, French for "River of Roebucks."
In December 1989 the U.S. Department of Energy discovered radioactive material "in and along" the creek. That discovery halted a flood-control project planned between the United States Army Corps of Engineers and local suburban communities for the previous eleven years.
The material was traced to two nearby dump sites, both from a common source: the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works. In 1942 Mallinckrodt had reached an exclusive agreement with the U.S. government's Manhattan Engineering District to produce weapons-grade uranium at its factory north of downtown. From 1947 the company and the AEC condemned a 21.7-acre property near Lambert Field for the purpose of accumulating dangerous wastes from the downtown plant and other locations. That site became the St. Louis Airport Storage Site. In 1966 a contractor relocated much of the material to another nearby location on Latty Avenue. Material from both the original SLAPPS site and from the Latty site eventually made its way into the creek bed.
In 1989 the creek was finalized on the National Priorities List of the Superfund program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Between 2008 and 2011, local residents noticed what seemed an unusual concentration of cancers, other illnesses, and birth defects among their age cohort. Many were graduates of McCluer North High School and organized around its class reunions. In August 2015, the United States Army Corps of Engineers admitted that they found thorium-230 in the creek. In January 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated the high rate of cancers in the area, and confirmed a potential link between the cluster and the polluted creek.