Amarillo article about ASARCO refinery

Becoming refined
Process begins at city's Asarco plant
By Jim McBride

jim.mcbride@amarillo.com

Jingle a few coins in your pocket and pull out one of those fancy new state quarters from the U.S. Mint.

The copper inside probably came from Asarco's Amarillo copper refinery.

The refining process begins with anodes - 2-inch-thick slabs of nearly pure copper about 3 feet wide and 3½ feet tall - that are shipped from an Asarco smelter in Arizona. [suddenly there is plenty of copper and plenty of smelters to keep Amarillo at good-production. What happened to the reasons to close Asarco El Paso down? El Paso's closure was supposed to have meant that Amarillo couldn't get enough copper. Now, eight years after Amarillo, El Paso, Helena, TN and Corpus Christi were hit with the multi-media consent decree for their deliberate profit-making burning of untracked toxic wastes... suddenly Amarillo is back in full production. El Paso was supposed to only be closed 3 years. The streets in El Paso were supposed to be paved for six years. What happened here? WHY SHUT DOWN A SMELTER AFTER TOXIC WASTE WAS BURNED?

What have they not told us??!?]

http://www.amarillo.com/stories/081907/bus_8149794.shtml

TCEQ General Counsel for Commission moves deadline back for decision on Motion to overturn Asarco Stormwater Permit

The TCEQ General Counsel for Commission moved the deadline back for
decision on Motion to Overturn (MTO) Asarco Stormwater Permit to the end
of September (90 days from when the permit was mailed). Legally the
Commission does not have to act on the MTO.