Bret Gustafson, associate professor of sociocultural anthropology in Arts & Sciences
A few years back, Patricia Schuba of Labadie, Mo., found a severed pig’s head in her driveway. Another time someone spray-painted “LEO Pig” on her car.
“LEO” was a reference to her participation in a community group, the Labadie Environmental Organization. Why was she targeted? LEO wanted to have a say in Ameren’s plan to build a new coal ash landfill in the Missouri River flood plain.
That’s right: a new waste dump for toxic coal ash, right by the river. By logic and science, having coal ash dumps in flood plains is a bad idea. Coal ash contains arsenic, boron, lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium and other known carcinogens.
Ameren’s coal-fired power plant at Labadie, like its plant in south St. Louis County (Meramec) and farther north (Sioux) have long polluted air and water. Mercury and sulfur dioxide go into the air. Toxins that leach out of coal waste go into the water. At Labadie one coal ash pond leaked into local groundwater for decades.
Read the full piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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