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ASARCO (formerly American Smelting and Refining Company) is a major producer of copper and other metals. It is a subsidiary of the Mexican mining and railroad company, Grupo Mexico. ASARCO is currently bankrupt but continues to have operations across the country.
ASARCO operated a smelter in El Paso for a century but shut it down in 1999 after the price of copper fell in the 1990s. It is now seeking an air quality permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to reopen the plant. ASARCO has a long history of involvement in environmental controversy and litigation.
From Rio Grande Sierran, Nov./Dec. 2007
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has sent a letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry voicing New Mexico‘s opposition to the renewal of the air permit that would allow the reopening of the ASARCO copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. With his letter, Richardson joined Mexican legislators, Sunland Park Mayor Ruben Segura, El Paso Mayor John Cook, Texas State Senator Eliot Shapleigh, Congressman Silvestre Reyes, and thousands of El Pasoans in opposing the smelter’s air permit renewal.
The New Mexico Environment Department has also written to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), asking it to review how air emissions from the smelter would affect New Mexico’s residents and environment. The TCEQ will soon decide whether to renew the permit for the facility, which is less than a mile from New Mexico‘s border and directly across the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico.
New Mexico had voiced technical concerns about the permit renewal for the last three years. Air monitoring in the Paso del Norte air shed has shown elevated levels of ozone and particulate matter. That air shed includes the governments of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, El Paso, Ciudad Juarez, and the State of Chihuahua, Mexico.
Along with air pollution issues, southern Doña Ana County and Sunland Park, New Mexico, have soils contaminated with lead due, in part, to past operations of the ASARCO El Paso plant. Those communities today face other air quality concerns, including elevated levels of airborne particulate matter and ground level ozone pollution. El Paso fears that the 7,000 tons of emissions to be permitted would force the city back into the non-attainment status of previous years and have a negative effect on the city’s efforts to attract new, high-quality growth.
Unfortunately, the TCEQ has limited hearings on the permit renewal to issues of air pollution, ignoring the widespread soil contamination from 100 years of smelter operation, the ongoing cleanup of hundreds of residential properties in West El Paso, and worst of all, the untold numbers of children affected by elevated levels of lead in their blood.
Fighting the ASARCO air permit renewal has been at the top of the El Paso Regional Group’s agenda for five years now. The group was also involved in the controversial sign-off on the patented contop technology installed at the smelter shortly before the plant shut down in 1999 after the price of copper fell in the 1990s. ASARCO, though bankrupt, still operates nationwide and has been able to afford an extensive public relations campaign in El Paso with regular city-wide mailings of slick brochures designed to improve its negative image.
Governor Richardson’s timely letter should help to convince the three member TCEQ to side with the people in opposing the reopening of the 100-year-old smelter. Unfortunately, Texas has a tradition of populating its commissions with ex-industry appointees. The open seat on the TCEQ, which Texas Governor Perry may fill by the time you read this, could very well determine El Paso’s future. A TCEQ decision on the permit renewal is expected within the next few months.
The following is the text of the letter sent October 1, 2007 by Governor Bill Richardson to Governor Rick Perry:
Dear Governor Perry:
I am writing to express the State of New Mexico‘s opposition to the proposed reinstatement of the ASARCO, Inc. air quality permit by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). I have serious concerns about the environmental harm and public health impacts that may occur with the renewal of the ASARCO El Paso plant’s air quality permit, especially in Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Our states share the Paso del Norte air shed. We are concerned about additional impacts from air pollution from the plant on New Mexico citizens as well as the residents in Texas. The residents in this area of our state are already burdened with pollution issues that negatively affect their health and environment.
New Mexico has voiced technical concerns about the permit renewal for ASARCO for the last three years. Monitoring in the Paso del Norte air shed has shown elevated levels of ozone and particulate matter. Along with air pollution issues, southern Doña Ana County and Sunland Park, New Mexico have soils contaminated with lead due, in part, to the ASARCO El Paso plant.
I urge you to reconsider the proposed reinstatement of the ASARCO El Paso air quality permit. The potential negative impacts to public health and the environment in southern New Mexico and western Texas will be significant. I look forward to working with the State of Texas to protect and improve air quality and the environment in the Paso del Norte region. Please have your staff contact Sarah Cottrell, my Energy & Environmental Policy Advisor, at sarah.cottrell@state.nm.us or 505-476- 2241 if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico
By Oliver Bernstein
From Rio Grande Sierran, March/April 2008
On February 13 the three-member Texas Commission on Environmental Quality voted to approve renewal of a state air pollution permit for the ASARCO metal smelter in El Paso, which would allow the smelter to reopen. The Sierra Club will work with the City of El Paso and community members to evaluate next steps, but the community has made it clear that they want to keep the smelter closed forever and get ASARCO to clean up the area.
The Sierra Club, the City of El Paso, and community members insist that ASARCO has done enough damage to the health and livelihood of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez and does not deserve this additional chance to pollute. For the 112 years that it operated, the ASARCO smelter emitted hundreds of tons of lead, arsenic, and cadmium into the sky and onto the homes of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez residents. Children living in the area, ranging from 2-6 years of age, showed blood lead levels high enough to warrant immediate medical intervention.
More than 200 people attended the hearing, most traveling from El Paso, Mexico and New Mexico to oppose the permit renewal. While they did not get the decision they wanted, opponents were pleased that the commissioners required ASARCO to increase monitoring of lead emissions in Texas, New Mexico and across the border in Mexico. This is an important step, but this 19th century facility still should remain closed.
The commissioners argued that current Texas law does not let them deny a state air emissions permit renewal. ASARCO continues therefore to abuse the state’s permitting process, since a permit application that cannot be denied is not much of a permit at all.
The Sierra Club believes that it is critical for public health, for air quality, for promoting compliance with environmental law, and for Texas-Mexico border relations for the ASARCO smelter to remain closed. The City of El Paso hopes to transition to a cleaner, 21st century economy with “green-collar” jobs and healthy residents. ASARCO represents the past, and the Sierra Club will continue to support community efforts to keep the smelter closed.
Environmental Justice Organizer Mariana Chew continues her outstanding work in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, and we wish her the best as the campaign continues.
By Eliot Shapleigh, TX State Senator
From Rio Grande Sierran, Jan./Feb. 2008
Quietly, ASARCO just picked your pocket—and not many in El Paso know. By filing bankruptcy in Corpus Christi, ASARCO has delivered a tab for nearly $11 billion to US taxpayers all across the West. Here’s how. For over 100 years, ASARCO operated the dirtiest smelters in the West. From lead smelters in El Paso, Omaha, and Tacoma to copper smelters in Arizona, ASARCO’s smokestacks belched out tons of pollutants over the decades.
In El Paso alone, ASARCO dumped over 1000 tons of lead over a three year period from 1969 to 1971. Lead is one of the most toxic and dangerous contaminants around. If young children ingest lead, they can suffer catastrophic and irreversible brain damage for life. Now, ASARCO’s tab has come due—and ASARCO wants it paid by you. Down in Corpus Christi, ASARCO filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy on August 9, 2005. Under bankruptcy rules, debt is divided into two piles: secured and unsecured. Secured creditors get paid or take their collateral. Unsecured creditors usually get pennies on the dollar—or in some cases, nothing.
After 100 years of polluting the West, ASARCO left a big pile of polluted cities. Nearly $11 billion of environmental claims have been filed by 16 states, two Indian tribes, the federal government, over ninety communities and thousands of private parties. Of the 75 sites nationwide, El Paso is one of the most affected. Most of these cities and states will be unsecured creditors.
For example, after smelting lead on the Missouri River near downtown Omaha, ASARCO left toxic levels of lead throughout the city, forcing the EPA to clean up more than 3,000 child care centers, residential homes, and other properties. In Tacoma, experts estimate that the 100 year old smoke plume from the ASARCO smelter contaminated a swath that covers more than 1,000 miles in three counties. Right now, experts in Corpus Christi are totaling all the ASARCO pollution debt—the heist to date is $11 billion. In Washington State, the Attorney General filed a claim for $600 million to protect the citizens of his state.
What will happen with most of this debt? You the taxpayer will pay to clean it up. ASARCO has one of the nation’s most powerful law firms, Baker Botts, fighting every day to shift the cost to you. Why Baker Botts? Because the ASARCO fight foreshadows other environmental cleanups to come. So what’s best case scenario? If the Superfund is made solvent, EPA will clean it slowly over many years. In Omaha, the clean up has lasted eight years. And if Superfund is not solvent, then individual property owning taxpayers will be strapped directly with clean up costs—$11 billion in contamination delivered straight to the taxpayer, either way.
And there may be more contamination. How, you ask? The answer is: ASARCO and fertilizer. For years, an El Paso-based fertilizer company, Ionate, sold a fertilizer that was used on the lawns all across our community. This fertilizer, it turns out, was laden with lead, arsenic, and other hazardous heavy metals. The now out-of-business company used slag from the Oglebay Norton slag-crushing company in west El Paso as part of the fertilizer. Oglebay Norton obtained the slag, a byproduct of the smelting process, from ASARCO.
The fact is the EPA never established the eastern boundary of lead contamination in El Paso. We don’t know the full extent of lead on yards in El Paso, but it is significantly more than what ASARCO reports in the Corpus Christi bankruptcy court. To date, 3,661 El Paso residential properties have been tested and 868 cleaned up—but in Omaha, the number of properties tested was 32,000 and the number cleaned was almost 3,000, under nearly identical scenarios. So, it’s fair to say that ASARCO has left a surprise for homeowners in our region for many years to come.
What about the ASARCO site itself ? When EPA first came to town, the Region 6 director told me, “Cleaning up onsite will cost $250 million in 2004 dollars.” Since ASARCO has kept a few employees on site since they closed in 1999, ASARCO has technically avoided the federal law that requires it to clean up the 585 acre site. So when, ASARCO finally closes down, expect the taxpayers to foot that bill too.
What happens, then, to the thousands of homeowners and small businesses who have lead on their property and don’t know it? When a home property seller goes to sell, any prudent buyer (and title company) will want to know about lead. Texas law requires sellers to disclose any lead as a defect. Prudent home buyers will ask for an EPA certificate that the property is lead-free. So, sellers will have to go get a test, and if the property has lead, pay to clean it up. The average cost of a consumer cleanup is $20,000 - $30,000. In other words, ASARCO lead will be cleaned up by El Paso homeowners at their expense since ASARCO is asking that all liabilities be discharged once the bankruptcy is done.
One environmental expert, Dr. Devra Davis, calls the ASARCO bankruptcy “a test-case for world-wide industrial interests to show how environmental liabilities can be shed—passed onto the people who actually suffered the damages in the first place.” Out here in the West we’ve seen our share of heists over the years—but “The Great ASARCO Heist of 2007” has to be one of the biggest ever!
