When Government Makes Things Worse

When Government Makes Things Worse

We’ve all experienced it. Someone from the government shows up, promising to fix a problem only to make it worse. It’s such a common experience that it provided President Ronald Reagan with one of his greatest lines: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I am here to help.”

It’s not just that the market sector is better positioned to handle most problems more efficiently and cheaply. It’s that private concerns function on a while differently from those in the public sector, have different imperatives, and respond to different pressures — and that makes all the difference in the world.

The difference can be shown clearly all over America, as is the case in Bridgeton, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. The people who live there have been dealing with a government-created nightmare for several decades that, up until very recently, had no end in sight.

Events at what is now the West Lake Landfill, closed since 1974, played a critical important role in our history and victory in World War II. The landfill contains Barium Sulfate, a radiological byproduct of the uranium enrichment needed for the Manhattan Project, the effort to create the world’s first atomic weapons.

What was buried there was not originally thought to be dangerous. Over time, as science and understanding improved, the realization that additional clean up was necessary took hold.

In the late 80s the landfill was proposed as a Superfund site, a designation that occurred in 1990. It took an additional 25 years for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to agree on a plan for clean up and containment of the radiological materials that they announced in November of 2015, with work to be completed by the end of 2016.

That it took 30 years to move ahead was due to not just to bureaucratic inertia but also to reports by numerous agencies including the EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources that the waste posed no immediate danger to public health. Nevertheless, just to be sure, the clean-up plan included the construction of an isolation barrier between the West Lake and Bridgton landfills as an extra layer of protection.

Under the terms of the action plan, all the reclamation work was to have been performed by the private sector, which would also have borne the costs of the clean up.

Enter Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who thinks that since the cleanup project is finally in the action phase she should intervene mainly by setting aside the agreed upon plan, starting over the entire assessment process and eventually replace it with one that puts the responsibility for cleanup in the hands of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Without holding a single hearing on the matter she’s introduced legislation that would do just that and, in the process, delay the clean-up by at least another ten years.



The people in Bridgeton have waited long enough. A clean-up plan was finally in place that wouldn’t cost taxpayers any more than the cost of the EPA to supervise the work. In the name of helping them, however, McCaskill and a couple of other members of Missouri’s congressional delegation want them to wait longer as the danger grows. Her bill, S.2306, would reset the 25-year clock Bridgeton just went through back to zero. Moreover she wants the taxpayers to pay for it all upfront without and guarantee they would be able to recover money spent.

Whatever the reason for her intervention, McCaskill is standing in the way of progress and success. What makes it worse is she’s trying to fast track the bill, side stepping any debate. Her plan imposes a whole new set of problems on constituents who have been waiting for a clean longer than she has been in government. Who’s really here to help?

Before the government steps onto the front porch to knock on the doors of the people Bridgeton because they’re there “to help,” Congress must debate the issue and the clean-up must be allowed to begin as scheduled under the existing EPA plan. These people have waited long enough. It’s wrong to make them wait any longer.

 Charlie Sauer