Biohazard Cleanup Near West Champ Champ, MO

Champ is a village in Northwest Township in St. Louis County, Missouri, near the Earth City industrial area along the Missouri River.

Champ was founded in 1959 by Bill Bangert, a former track-and-field athlete and former mayor of Berkeley, who purchased the land from St. Louis businessman Norman Champ.

Although Bangert bought the land from Norman Champ, he insisted the village's name came from the word 'champion' rather than from the former landowner.

Bangert founded Champ with grand plans to build the world's largest domed stadium - a 115,000-seat arena meant to attract a future Olympic Games - along with a large indoor shopping center and other tourist attractions, but the stadium was never built.

In the early 1960s Missouri Attorney General Thomas Eagleton challenged Champ's legitimacy in court, arguing the new village was a private enterprise rather than a true municipality.

Champ's population peaked at 50 residents in 1960 and fell to just 10 in the 2020 census, making it the least populous of St. Louis County's municipalities.

Today the village consists almost entirely of a limestone quarry and the Champ Landfill - formerly the Fred Weber Sanitary Landfill - described as the largest solid waste facility in Missouri.

Gas captured from the Champ landfill is burned to generate electricity at a landfill-gas power plant built beside the site.