Yesterday I visited the cold and frozen Howell Prairie in Weldon Springs. I first heard of this prairie last week at the holiday party of the North American Butterfly Association. Apparently, the site was the location of a massive Superfund clean-up a few years ago. Now a 150-acre prairie has been planted as part of the ongoing management plan.
When I arrived I was immediately struck by two things. First, the site is dominated by an enormous white hill. This thing is huge. It is visible in nearly every photo I took. Second, the prairie is part of a federal installation and is owned and administered by the Department of Energy. There are lots of signs around telling you what can and can’t be done. See their website
here.
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| Check out St. Louis in this map! |
There is a large, impressive interpretive center on site with displays about the history and current management of the land. Here is what I learned.
The prairie is new. It was created in the winter of 2003 and 2004. The site was seeded by DJM Ecological Services with about 80 species of grasses and forbs. Jon Wingo, the owner of DJM, is also the President of the Missouri Prairie Foundation. You can see a blurb about the Howell Prairie on the
DJM website. Ongoing management includes both mowing and burning. According to a person I spoke with at the site, the public is not allowed to observe the annual burns.
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| One corner of the disposal cell |
The prairie surrounds the site’s central feature, the huge white hill. This hill is actually an enormous tomb filled with toxic waste generated at the site in years past. The “disposal cell”, as they call it, was engineered to safely sequester the waste for 1,000 years.
The disposal cell is 75 feet tall and covers 45 acres. It contains 1.5 million cubic yards of demolished buildings, equipment, containers, contaminated soil, and radioactive waste including uranium, radium and thorium.
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| The disposal cell is covered with rip rap. |
Three small towns were located here in the early 1900’s but during the early years of WWII everyone was moved out to make way for a huge TNT production complex. The site later became a center for uranium ore processing. In the early 1960’s plans were developed to produce Agent Orange at the site, but this never came to fruition and the facility was closed in 1969.
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| 1.5 million yards of contaminated fill below me |
From 1941-1968 the site generated a variety of toxic chemicals and radioactive waste. Much of this was discarded into unlined ponds, abandoned in barrels and buildings and dumped into a nearby limestone quarry. The quarry is located less than a mile from a well field that supplied drinking water for St. Charles County. Nuclear waste was brought from other places and discarded here as well. Obviously, the area was heavily contaminated and very dangerous. The Department of Energy invested nearly a billion dollars in the clean-up. The interpretive center presents all this information and is definitely worth a visit.
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| Francis Howell High just to the northeast |
I was there to see the prairie though so after hiking up to the top of the disposal cell (and seeing Francis Howell High School a bit less than ½ mile to the northeast) I descended and explored the prairie. I saw little wildlife - a few blackbirds and finches - but there were numerous deer tracks and the occasional raccoon scat.
The prairie is short - about waist to chest high - unlike the Heartland Prairie in Alton where grasses and forbs grow
six to eight feet high. The plants are still getting
established after a decade of growth.
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| The disposal cell is impossible to ignore. |
I wonder if the slow growth rate has anything to do with the soil at the site. The underlying soil profile has been heavily altered. Although the entire area was prairie during the Nineteenth Century, up to several feet of contaminated soil was scraped away during remediation. Clean soil was brought in and spread across the surface. Soil fertility was amended but perhaps the new soil was not of the highest quality.
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| Hairy mountain mint |
The topographic contours of the site were constructed so water drains away from the disposal cell. Clearly, very little remains of the original
in situ environmental variables that contributed to the health of the presettlement prairie. I suppose it is a miracle that plants are growing at all! It would be interesting to talk to Jon Wingo and hear his thoughts and observations about the development of the prairie at this location.
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| Compass plant |
Nonetheless, the Howell Prairie is a beautiful place and I recommend that anyone interested visit it. The plant growth is healthy. Even in the dead of winter there is a lot of green foliage at ground level and the dormant plant stalk are incredibly beautiful – full of intricate shapes, details, swaying and rustling in the wind.
The site is so large that a number of landscapes are present. Tall grass prairie dominates and little bluestem (
Schizachyrium scoparium) seems to be the most common grass across the prairie.
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| Cattails |
There are a couple of swampy areas where scrubby trees, cattails and
Carex spp. are scattered among the prairie plants. Slopes seem to have a different species composition than hill tops. In several places one forb dominates with other species mixed in. These
concentrations include asters, beardtongue (
Penstemon digitalis), bee balm (
Monarda sp.), rattlesnake master (
Eryngium yuccifolium), and stiff goldenrod (
Solidage rigida).
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| Grey coneflower stalks |
Other species noted include compass plant (
Silphium laciniatum), false indigo (
Baptisia sp.), mountain mint (
Pycnanthemum sp.), bush clover (
Lespedeza capitata) and prairie clover (
Dalea purpurea). There are many species of grass as well. I noticed a small stand of
Iva annua in a less well drained area behind the disposal cell. I doubt this was sown intentionally. It likely represents a natural recolonization of this species from the Missouri River valley just a couple of miles away as the crow flies. You can access a partial list of species installed at Howell Prairie
here.
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| Monitoring well #2038 |
If you visit don’t expect wilderness. The sound of traffic on Highway 40 (maybe a mile and a half to the north) was an omnipresent low hum. The Department of Energy continues an intensive groundwater monitoring program in the area. You are never out of sight of several of these clusters of bright yellow posts. As I mentioned earlier, the disposal cell is such an enormous feature that, as long as you are vertical, you never lose sight of it.
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| More monitoring wells at the tree line |
My visit left me with a profound sadness over our seeming propensity to screw up everything we touch. At the same time I realize that our knowledge increases and we try to do better all the time. The people who built this place probably didn’t realize they were destroying the environment. They likely thought that dumping TNT residues into a huge unlined pit full of water was the best way to dispose of it.
One of the most shocking things I saw were pictures of soil cores taken from the disposal pits. Seeing those rainbow-hued soil cores really brings home what was going on here. I think the take home for me is that we should keep an open mind to the potential harmful effects of our actions. ‘Walk softly on the earth’ is a good position to start from. Think about how our purchases, our choices, our daily activities might be helping create some future environmental disaster. We might not prevent it. But we might.
As I was driving home the huge moon rose above O'Fallon. I looked at that gorgeous moon shining down on all that clutter - the stores with their garish lighted signs, Highway 40 full of automobiles belching carbon, and row upon row of hideous cheap suburban housing. I despaired again and felt ashamed that this is what we do - here on such a wonderful planet, under the gaze of this beautiful and mysterious moon.
