I’m bumping up this piece from May 25, 2010. It still blows my mind that the county’s own research shows Ameren is responsible for most of the county’s pollution and here they sit, poised to allow them to pollute us even more. Amazing. It would be different if they were ignorant of the facts. But the commissioners have the information on file down the hall in the Planning and Zoning Department.

On May 17th, 2010 the Franklin County Planning and Zoning Dept. held the first in its series of open houses to discuss existing conditions in the county and to get ideas and concerns from the public. The presentation provided lots of statistics but one section in particular stood out for me. From the PowerPoint presentation we learn …

Other Pollution:

• Franklin County ranked #5 in Missouri (2007) for total toxic chemicals disposed of or released
• 93.7% of toxic chemicals came from Ameren power plant in Labadie
• Majority is solid waste stored onsite
• > 1/3 waste comes from air emissions (hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride, sulfuric acid, metal compounds (e.g., mercury)

This candid admission by county officials that AmerenUE is responsible for most of our environmental toxins sparked my curiosity about any health trends that might be associated with all those chemicals. So I headed over to the National Cancer Institute’s website where a searchable database provides state cancer profiles by county. What I found was striking. Franklin County has among the highest incidence of cancer per 100,000 people in the state. Interestingly, so do the surrounding counties of St. Louis, St. Charles, Crawford  and Lincoln Counties. All have rates in the 480 to 550 per 100,000 range. (see map). And what sets in the middle of all those counties? The Labadie coal-fired power plant, that’s what. The same power plant the county now says is responsible for more than 90 percent of our environmental toxins, many of which are known carcinogens.

Incidence of rates per 100,000

A 2007 EPA risk assessment confirms a link between coal ash and increased rates of cancer. According to the report the risk of getting cancer from coal ash lagoons is many times greater than government safety standards allow. And if there isn’t enough toxic pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and selenium, coming from the Labadie Plant’s existing slurry ponds, Ameren is proposing a landfill in the Labadie Bottoms floodplain to import yet more toxic waste into our community from its other coal plants.

There appears to be a similar pattern in Kansas City, but there are some big differences. Kansas City gets 70 percent of its energy from coal but the coal plants are much smaller than Labadie and situated in different locations. The Iatan Plant in Platte County has a capacity of 726 megawatts and the Hawthorn Plant in Jackson has a capacity of 594 megawatts. By comparison, the Labadie Plant has a capacity of 2389 megawatts and emits far more CO2 and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. But perhaps more importantly, the Iatan storage facility is ranked 94th out of the 100 most polluting coal waste plants in the nation, whereas, Labadie is ranked 22nd.

A third plant owned by Great Plains Energy is in Henry County. You can find its location on the map by looking for the two counties in red to the south east of Kansas City. As with Clay County, which is situated between the Iatan and Hawthorn plants, Henry County and neighboring Benton County have similarly high incidence of cancer. 

Another point of interest is the cluster of counties in red to the south of Franklin County that stretch down to the Arkansas border. There are no coal plants there at all. But that area is known for its lead mining and smeltering operations. In fact, it is considered the Southeast Missouri Lead District or “The Lead Belt” and produces about 70 percent of the nation’s supply of lead. European lead mining started there in 1720 so there are plenty of environmental toxins there to account for that area’s increased cancer mortality and incidence rates — the same kinds of toxins produced by the burning of coal.

Of course, industry will argue correlation does not prove causation. And scientifically speaking that is true. For example, another contributing factor could be that the metro St. Louis area is located at the convergence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, downstream from other major industrial pollution sources. But the surprising revelation by the Franklin County Planning and Zoning Department that “93.7% of toxic chemicals came from Ameren power plant in Labadie” ranking us number five in the state “for total toxic chemicals disposed of or released,” coupled with data from the National Cancer Institute, should give any reasonable person pause. The last thing we need in the county is to import more toxic waste in the form of coal ash into our floodplains.