PUBLIC SCOPING MEETING #2 COMMENT AND RESPONSE REPORT Loop 375 Border Highway West Extension Project December 8, 2011

See my comments (mcmurray)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/elp/projects/border_highway_west/summary_120811.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiXmuCWrJiLAxUfHEQIHfRqOYcQFnoECBEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0pHCsFDzXhN2_LeaXIys0I

PUBLIC SCOPING MEETING #2 COMMENT AND RESPONSE REPORT

Loop 375 Border Highway West Extension Project

December 8, 2011

"I've been researching ASARCO for seven years now. I have a 

master's in biology, I'm a certified high school science teacher. I 

was a member of Get the Lead Out when we went to the air 

hearing for ASARCO's permit in 2005, and kept researching 

ASARCO working with the group in Sunland Park called the 

Sunland Park Grassroots Environmental Group. 

We discovered that people weren't being told everything about the contamination at ASARCO. And in 2006 I was able to get a 73-

page confidential for settlement purposes only EPA/federal 

Department of Justice/ASARCO document from the -- someone in 

the Department of Justice under a Texas Public Information Act 

request. 

The document told us that in no uncertain terms that ASARCO 

had been running a multistate illegal, unpermitted hazardous 

waste incinerator for almost ten years, maybe longer. We know 

that they ran it between 1991 pre-ConTop -- the ConTop 

furnaces, spelled C-0-N-T-0-P. They had the world's two largest 

ConTop furnaces from -- so from 1991 to 1998. 

Representative Reyes went on record with the El Paso Times 

after I got this document in 2006. He said that ASARCO had paid 

millions on the condition that the details of what it had done 

would never become public. We've been after the details now 

since I got that document in 2006. It's been five years. We've 

dealt with two different EPA administrations, the recent one for 

two years, and we still don't have the details of what they did. 

We are still asking for the manifests that were listed by number --

ID number in that confidential 1998 document. 

If TxDOT, the EPA, TCEQ and other companies and agencies -- for 

instance, Grupo Mexico who bought ASARCO in 1999 -- if all of 

them had to deal with the facts publicly, the details of what 

ASARCO had done, none of this would be possible. None of this 

highway development by or through ASARCO could happen 

without the proper cleanup. In other words, they're getting away 

with ignoring some pretty toxic material, and this happened 

because the federal Department of Justice allowed the ASARCO 

bankruptcy court to skip, go -- to skip or ignore the ASARCO 

liability from the materials it handled between 1991 and 1998. 

They were never discussed during the bankruptcy, never brought up in the bankruptcy and they were never assigned any damage, 

you know, the payment that they had to make to remediate 

these materials. 

It was, as Representative Reyes said, that they had made a deal 

to keep the details secret. And we believe that it's because we 

now know ASARCO was disposing of Department of Energy 

wastes and so were several of the companies caught sending 

materials here to El Paso for illegal incineration. So every time 

they move dirt in this area, every time anyone works in this area, 

anytime anyone drinks water taken from this area we run a risk 

of encountering one of those hazardous wastes that nobody 

wants to talk about and that they refuse to test for. 

What's happening is that they want this land development so bad 

and they want the port of entries developed so badly and the 

railroads to go through and all this development to happen that 

everyone is willing to just ignore the fact that ASARCO burned 

the stuff for nearly ten years, it's here and that ignoring it isn't 

going to make it go away. And if they want to construct these 

highways properly, if the EPA wants to deliver honest science, 

then they will tell us what these materials are instead of 

spending over-- almost $500,000 on testing and not finding 

anything is what's happening with the cleanup. They would 

spend 20,000 to get a complete list of the metals present at the 

site like at least one resident has done here, and they haven't 

done it. 

They refuse to let us get samples of a distillation unit that 

handled the water for the entire plant that was removing low 

level radioactive waste from the plant's process water. And then 

when they demolished it, got rid of it, sold off the metal, 

whatever, then they said to us, Tell us where to test to find this 

stuff. So what they're doing is getting rid of the stuff and making it harder for the average citizen to ever be able to prove the stuff 

is floating around down there. 

And we rely on our government to deliver honest services, to 

provide honest science, to disclose what hazardous materials are 

present, and I was really sad to see on one of these charts that 

some of the options going through or near the ASARCO site claim 

that there weren't hazardous materials present. And I'm like, 

How can they say that? Everything within nine miles of the 

smelter is contaminated. 

And if you look at the ASARCO Tacoma, Washington, smelter, 

their contamination went out 30 miles. So it's a bad situation. We 

do need transportation options, but we should be planning these 

with the knowledge of what we're actually dealing with, not just 

ignoring the problem that is there. 

They're going to end up putting these roads in that they've 

shown here, they've discussed it with city council. Representative 

Pickett said that he would hold ASARCO's feet to the fire and he 

never did. They claim that voters get to vote on these options, 

they claim that this is a public hearing when it's a series of charts 

and you get to make comments and the comments are never 

really -- never really make any impact on these designs. They' do 

what they want to do. 

The area along Executive drive, west of Executive drive, has 

already been platted and building has started there. All that the 

city will recognize it's contaminated with is lead and it goes on 

like that. I don't see how they can build here and protect the 

workers building the highway and protect the residents' children 

who will move into the area and protect the drivers driving 

through from being exposed to this stuff for the next hundred 

years unless they spend the money that they want to spend making this highway on remediation of the site instead. 

I heard that it will cost over 600 million to build all this. Well, why 

aren't they spending the 600 million to clean up the ASARCO site 

correctly and to protect our river from the plume that's 

underneath ASARCO that's impinging upon the canal in the Rio 

Grande as we speak? Why aren't they spending the money that 

way? Why are they bringing more people in, creating a traffic jam 

at this spot by building all these other parts of the outer circle 

around El Paso and leaving this to last so that people -- there's 

this -- going to be a traffic jam. And people will want it built 

simply out of desperation because they can't get anywhere. 

I think that the engineers involved aren't chemical engineers. I 

think that the people in our government who have worked for 

previous administrations and now this one don't care and I think 

that it's wrong to build roads through this, disturb it, have 

railroads going through it, have people living on it. And some day, 

it may take a hundred years but -- you know, it's wrong to disturb 

it. It should be left alone and made into a no man's land until it 

has proper cleanup. 

The EPA wants it demolished -- ASARCO demolished as fast as 

possible, to have it paved over to reduce the chances of our 

exposure, but they won't say exposure to what. They're being 

gagged by what Representative Reyes described, the millions that 

ASARCO paid on that deal to keep the details secret. And yet 

we're being exposed to this stuff and the people who build this 

highway are too and the workers presently cleaning up ASARCO 

are also. And it's a real shame. Why can't we down here along 

the border get the same kind of expertise, the same kind of 

access to science, the same kind of access to well thought out 

projects that consider all their actual information, not just what 

contractors want us to hear? Why on the border is it always this  way? 

It's extremely frustrating to me. This is an environmental sacrifice 

zone, environmental justice zone. It is being ignored by the EPA, 

it's being ignored by the TCEQ and now it's being ignored by 

TxDOT, and it's not being ignored by the community. Some day 

someone's going to be accountable for the children who grow up 

here who will be able to say they've only lived here and they're 

neighbor only lived here and they grew up and they have all 

these horrible things happening to them. And it -- it's just a 

legacy that we don't deserve down here. We don't -- we 

shouldn't have to live with. 

They should be getting this -- the kind -- they should be getting 

public comment before they start to design all this intricate stuff, 

and they're not. It's all about people making money instead of 

spending the money on our future generations, wisely growing 

children who are healthy and removing the costs that we have to 

deal with for children who have behavioral disorders, learning 

disabilities, the social costs that go with that. It's wrong to pass 

those costs on to families just so that contractors can make more 

money planning all this."