ConTop was a cover for the illegal burning of unmanifested poisons for profit (reply to El Paso Times article about UTEP economic study concerning ASARCO

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	ConTop was a cover for the illegal burning of unmanifested poisons for profit (reply to El Paso Times article about UTEP economic study concerning ASARCO)
Date:	Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:29:34 -0600
To:	lgilo[at]elpasotimes.com

in 1992, after more than 100 years in operation, Asarco invested $100 million to modernize the El Paso plant using a new technology called ConTop which, officials said, increased production to 150,000 pounds of copper annually and reduced air emissions by more than 90 percent."

Dear Mr. Gilot,

ConTop reduced Sulfur dioxide, but it also did something called "energy recovery".  It was designed to burn non-traditional metal-bearing materials like shredded automobiles and sludge to generate heat to smelt traditional ores.  So, Asarco secretly shipped unrecorded (unmanifested) poisons into its plant and incinerated them for profit - they never intended to get any metals out of those materials.  The EPA tracked down 5000 tons -- enough to prove that materials from Rocky Mt. Arsenal and other sources had no metals in their materials for recovery -- the smelter never intended to smelt any metals.  It was an unlicensed hazardous waste incinerator in the middle of the Paso del Norte region and it poisoned us. (see attached article).  And, by the EPA's own admission, Asarco's business of incinerating hazardous waste was a big money maker for the smelter.  The EPA, the Department of Justice and Asarco kept that information hidden from our community for eight years, until we got the document from the D.O.J. and released it 10/2006.

So, while ConTop reduced some air emissions, it gave off tremendous toxic amounts of materials that the smelter and our environmental agencies never tested for.  We know that their brine concentrator, for example, was rated to handle Low Level Radioactive waste; and that from Asarco's own reports it handled chemical weapons quench water.

Thank you,
Heather McMurray

"Asarco commissioned a study on the economic impact of the proposed reopening of the El Paso copper smelter. Here are some of the result:
In El Paso
# 291 new direct jobs.
# 1,819 new indirect jobs.
# $73 million in new labor income per year from direct and indirect jobs.
# $1.16 billion in regional economic output.
At the Amarillo refinery
# 44 new jobs.
# 286 new indirect jobs.
# $11 million in new labor income per year from direct and indirect jobs.
# $134 million regional economic output.
In Texas
# 334 new direct jobs.
# 2,264 new indirect jobs.
# $92.7 million in new labor income per year from direct and indirect jobs.
# $1.35 billion in regional economic output."

THE NEGATIVE COSTS TO OPENING:
#  50 million to clean-up a site like Helena Montana (El Paso site is worse)
# 1 Billion to clean-up Asarco contaminated sites in the USA
# 24 million alone to clean up the Asarco contamination beneath the old upper american
canal by the smelter in El Paso TX
#  Dying and ill workers (some costing $1000/day in experimental drugs to stay alive)
#  hidden costs of asthma, people dying slowly from C.O.P.D., costs of medical care/oxygen
#  hidden costs to police, schools and other public agencies from children exposed to heavy metals
    at an early early age causing explosive-anger, learning disabilities, emotional disabilities
#  hidden costs to residents of this region from brain, nasal, skin and other cancers
#  hidden costs to families whose babies suffered birth defects from the poisons

TCEQ failing to enforce identification and cleanup of contamination from illegal burning of toxic waste by Asarco El Paso

To:  TCEQ complaint

sb:  TCEQ failing to enforce identification and cleanup of contamination from illegal burning of toxic waste by Asarco El Paso

I am filing this as a formal complaint asking the TCEQ to run a full spectrometer analysis of the material dredged from the bottom of the 100 year old Asarco pond and sent to TX US ecology for storage, with the purpose of identifying the chemical compounds left here from the illegal sham-recycling by Asarco.  I also ask that a full spectrometer analysis be done of the present-bottom of that same pond at the Asarco site and where the most runoff would have contacted soil during the 9-4-06 collapse of Asarco rubber lake.  Also, please run an analysis from a scraping of the Asarco primary smoke-stack; and from the Ionics brine concentrator's concentrate chambers.  This analysis should include ash-incineration-technique to check for alpha and beta particles.

High level officials in the TCEQ and the EPA are violating honest services provision of the mail and wire fraud act by

• failure to identify and enforce cleanup of the toxic poisons incinerated/stored by Asarco El Paso from its subsidiary in Corpus Christi, TX.
• pretending to carry on a legitimate permitting process on the El Paso Asarco smelter while continuing to ignore that this site has NOT BEEN DECONTAMINATED from the burning of these wastes
• failure to identify the wastes left here from this incineration/handling
• failure to explain the resulting health effects to the community  
  

Public officials have known that these toxins are now in our water, the alluvial sediments and aquifer.  The TCEQ is failing to continue metal testing of the river below Asarco saying it "isn't necessary any longer".  The TCEQ is failing to identify the toxins left in our water supply from the decade of illegal Asarco sham-recycling.