ST. CHARLES — A medical logistics company will soon begin storing hazardous materials in St. Charles’ protected wellhead district.
The company, Life Couriers, had asked the city for a special permit that would allow it to store and distribute potent medications used to treat prostate cancer and leukemia from an existing 19,000-square-foot warehouse in the 3800 block of Fountain Lakes Parkway East along Highway 370 on the city’s north side.
The St. Charles City Council approved the company’s request on Tuesday, but with restrictions, including requiring an annual inspection and that insurance information and an emergency response plan be filed with the city.
Residents and nearby property owners were concerned that the company’s medications could pollute the wellhead — the primary source of the city’s drinking water.
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At the same time, residents were opposed to a proposal from developer CRG to build a 440-acre data center and to store up to 1 million gallons of diesel fuel near the wellfield, at Huster Road and Harry S Truman Boulevard. CRG withdrew its proposal after public opposition.
At the Tuesday meeting, a handful of residents urged the council to reject Life Couriers’ request.
Among those hoping to stop the project was Tim Kline, who owns a farm near the warehouse site. Kline, who has also worked as a union carpenter, said while he supports development and businesses opening in the area, he hoped they would be businesses that would not potentially harm the environment.
“This is just one more small business that wants to move in and get a permit to hold hazardous material on site,†he said.
Zach Tusinger, the city’s community development director, said during the meeting that 12 other companies operating in the wellhead area also store hazardous materials on site.
But residents like Kline were unswayed.
“Just because we’ve done it before doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it,†Kline said.
Life Couriers is relocating the warehouse to St. Charles from Hazelwood as a cost-savings measure and because many of Life Couriers’ workers live in St. Charles County, said Tyler Lawson, the company’s chief financial officer.
He said critics just wanted a “sound bite for their TikTok so they can get their five minutes of fame.â€
He also pushed back on those who believed Life Couriers was “moving giant vats of chemicals that are spewing out.†He said the vials — which contain a picogram, or roughly 1,000,000,000,000th of a gram — are carefully packed inside of a temperature-controlled container about the size of a shoebox.
According to city documents, box trucks would make between five to six deliveries per week to the warehouse. A team of 10 delivery drivers would then distribute the medications using cargo vans. The delivery drivers would make about 50 deliveries per week.
An additional 5 to 10 workers would work full-time at the warehouse, Lawson said.
“We’re talking about extremely small volumes and extremely short periods of time which (the medications) are on-site,†he said. “They may only be there for a few hours before our teams are there to deliver them.â€
He also said federal privacy laws bar the company from disclosing what hospitals or healthcare providers would be receiving the medications, saying that the company ships medications from coast-to-coast.
Tusinger, the city’s community development director, said the soon-to-be-issued special permit only applies for storing the medications in the warehouse. If the company were to begin manufacturing medications on site, then the special permit would likely be revoked and the company would have to complete a new round of public hearings and votes.
Lawson has previously said the company is not a drug manufacturer and that no raw materials would be stored at the facility.
He said the company, which was previously known as Associated Couriers, has been around for 50 years. Life Couriers’ regional headquarters, also in Hazelwood, is relocating to Fenton, according to St. Charles documents.
The company specializes in the transport of drugs, radioactive material, stem cells, gene therapies, lab specimens, clinical trials, organs for transplant, and medical devices, according to a brochure published on the company’s website.
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