ST. LOUIS (AP) - A federal judge has sent the state of Missouri’s environmental lawsuit against the owner of a burning St. Louis-area landfill back to state court.
Republic Services owns the burning Bridgeton Landfill west of St. Louis and the adjacent radioactively contaminated West Lake Landfill.
Last October, the company removed the 2012 lawsuit by Attorney General Chris Koster to federal court. Republic argued that Koster’s office was seeking to assert state control over radioactive material under federal jurisdiction.
Koster called the move a few months before a trial date a stalling tactic.
But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (https://bit.ly/21eHAtG) reports that a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Republic injected a federal question into an otherwise state-law claim.
The case now moves back to St. Louis County Circuit Court.
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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, https://www.stltoday.com
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