Sick 'Em, City of El Paso!: Going After Asarco,,by Chris Cummings

Posted on June 21, 2007

If (a big “IF”) anyone could remediate the wasteland around the Asarco plant one day (see Asarco bankruptcy and the multi-millions they already owe to dozens of states around the country), or even today, what role will Asarco play in the clean up? They’ll leave a tip on the table and say ‘Thanks, we had a nice meal here for a hundred years, but we are finished.’ They won’t ask for the tab. They will dine and dash. But as a courtesy, as a nod to the working men and women (whom they will one day employ…and abandon), whom they now have working for them, spinning the benefits of the reopening because their union has worked out a deal (see United Steel Workers [USW] Union’s full page ad(s) in the El Paso Times over the past few months), for you my friends, they will eventually leave unemployment and heartache (I’m not even going to get into the health consequences.)..........
http://newspapertree.com/opinion/1490-sick-em-city-of-el-paso-going-after-asarco

Asarco Rubber Lake breaking on 9/4/06 pouring 200,000 gallons of concentrated poisons and storm-water into the old american canal. The canal is our drinking water- it is pulled into a 48" pipe into the Canal St. Water Treatment plant and then the plant pumps the water up the mountain to distribute it throughout El Paso.

Letter to the Editor, El Paso Inc. sent 2/12/07 to Editor and EPWU Attorney Andron

Thank you for the article and photo about the repair of the old upper American canal's broken panel, showing the Jobe Concrete truck pouring cement for the new panel, near the American Dam (established by International Treaty for the delivery of waters to Mexico and the USA). http://www.elpasoinc.com/showArticle.asp?articleId=971

We know from the IBWC's reports that 24 million dollars worth of hazardous waste is in the soil beneath those panels right there. Some of it is odorless and tasteless. We know from the EPWU's water reports above and below that buckled-panel that it is leaking into that water still flowing past the feet of those men, who are now exposed to it. Those men are not wearing masks, most are not wearing gloves -- no one is wearing white environmental suits. Some of those men will wash their clothes at home or in commercial laundromats, and family members (maybe pregnant wives or growing kids) will handle the contaminated clothing.
We know that between mid-March and mid-October that El Paso will get its drinking water from this canal; and, that contamination still leaks
through the old-joints and the weep-holes into the canal where ground-water touches the liner. The contamination will pass along over 70 miles of agricultural irrigation canal. The farmland below Asarco has been called an "arsenic time-bomb" in at least one research paper.

Our community knows that Asarco burned illegal hazardous waste for nearly a decade just a stone's throw away from this liner. Smeltertown, in the background of this photo on the EP Inc., had 18 inches of soil removed nearly 40 years ago, for just the Pb (lead) content alone.

The panels in that old canal were made over 70 years ago of 3 inches of concrete laid over re-bar, just like in that photo - and layered in two directions. They should be made of 4 inches of reinforced concrete. This is a patch-job it appears, and the rest of the 3 miles and 400 or so panels are still in danger of failing. The panels' failure was predicted years ago.

The State Department in spring of '05 reviewed the various IBWC sites and said that the employees at American Dam next to old-smeltertown were sick, and that they were not getting independent medical review from this region.
How long will our regulatory agencies responsible for our well-being continue to conceal its conflicts of interests from this community and pass along the responsibilities to the next generation--- "pass-the-buck", in cancers, lead exposure, arsenic trioxides and actinide exposures?

Heather McMurray
El Paso, TX

Radioactive metal smelting plant

Metal smelting plant was taken at its word

Part of: Leningrad NPP

Although Sosnovy Bor authorities have withdrawn a suit banning the import of radioactive metal waste into the town, Ekomet-S, the importer of that waste, has agreed on its own to cease such imports for the time being, though the company says it doesn't want to hold off forever. Rashid Alimov, 22/07-2002

On July 31st, St Petersburg's Court of Arbitration will be again considering the suit filed by the authorities of Sosnovy Bor against Ekomet-S.

At the previous arbitration session, which was the second, Sosnovy Bor authorities withdrew one of their suits.

Ekomet-S
The radioactive metal smelting plant Ekomet-S is situated on the premises of the Leningrad Nuclear Power plant (LAES), only few hundred meters away from the shore of the Baltic Sea shore and four kilometres from Sosnovy Bor's 60,000 inhabitants. The closed nuclear town itself is located 80km from St Petersburg.

The plant was built secretly and without an environmental impact study, which is required by Russian legislation.

The facility, which is devoted to the smelting and decontamination of radioactive metals for resale on the open market, was built by the Ministry for Nuclear Energy — the notorious Minatom — and fissile fuel monopolists hoping to cash in on the smelting of radioactive metal waste from nuclear power plants across Russia. Gazprom-bank invested $10m in the project.

The very fact that a private plant is located at the territory of the state-run LAES may be considered a violation of the current legislation. In late 2001, a group of LAES security guards published an open letter in which they claimed that since the opening of the smelting plant, they had been exposed to radiation. Their contracts, they noted, had not stipulated they would be working in conditions that exposed them to radiation hazards.............
http://www.bellona.org/english_import_area/international/russia/npps/leningrad/24950

Monday 6-25 at 10:30 AM Signing ceremony at City Hall 2nd floor chambers

Invite for JAC Members: signing of Emergency
Plan for Hazardous Chemicals (USA EPA
Administrator to witness)

Texas may rule on Asarco copper smelter in August

Fri Jun 22, 2007 6:13PM EDT

MEXICO CITY, June 22 (Reuters) - Texas could give U.S. copper miner Asarco the green light to restart its mothballed El Paso copper smelter any time from August onward, state environmental authorities said on Friday.

Andrea Morrow, spokeswoman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said no date was set for the hearing.

"The earliest it could be scheduled is August and the commision can grant the permit, deny the permit, or do something else," she said by telephone.

Reopening the 150,000 short ton per year smelter, built in the 19th century and closed amid low copper prices in 1999, would be an important financial boost for bankrupt Asarco, owned by Mexico City-based Grupo Mexico (GMEXICOB.MX: Quote, Profile, Research).

But a vocal lobby that includes environmental groups, some local officials and U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes oppose the smelter because of worries about air quality....
see:
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2240060020070622

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.

Sham Environmental Justice?

To: Mr. Hook, Env. Justice Director EPA Region 6

sb:  EPA visit to El Paso June 20

Please send us a copy of your agenda during your visit to this region.  If necessary,please consider this an FOIA request for that information.   I would like to know the purpose of your visit to El Paso and this region, and whom you spoke/met with while here.

I live 3 miles from the Asarco smelter that burned toxic waste for nearly a  decade without a permit and contaminated our aquifer, much of that time on your watch.  I suggest that like the TCEQ's sham-permitting-process for Asarco's sham-recyling, you possibly are in charge of sham-environmental-justice and it is time you delivered actual justice to this regions' peoples.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/5dc6087040a927d3852572a000650c01/b8c7edeba47531b5852570d6005e7e5c!OpenDocument
 
During that time you had to be aware of the largest TCEQ (Texas-EPA agreement state)hearing ever conducted on the Sierra Blanca nuclear dump, and were on watch when NYC's organized crime railed-and-dumped NYC sludge on the tiny minority town of Sierra Blanca.

Since your visit here, Asarco has canceled a public meeting for this weekend defending their position on re-opening this contaminated smelter.  If you visited with anyone connected with Asarco or representing Asarco interests, please let us know.

I am bc'ing this email to media contacts. 

Asarco sends up smoke screen

Letters published in El Paso Times

Article Launched: 06/20/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT

Asarco sends up smoke screen

Mr. Lairy Johnson, Environmental Manager of Asarco, has been addressing local groups with a PowerPoint presentation which is not entirely accurate.

Mr. Johnson has stated that the Asarco smelter has not burned hazardous wastes and Asarco's El Paso smelter has not been fined for burning hazardous wastes.

The truth, per a New York Times article and related EPA report, is that the EPA fined Asarco $20 million for burning hazardous chemical weapons waste for several years: (Google New York Times Asarco and look at the third listing, or go to http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/us/11toxic.html?ex=1318219200&en=3ee634faa2197f28&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss).

Mr. Johnson has stated that the Asarco smelter will not emit more air contaminants than 230 El Paso households.

The truth is that little or no sulfur dioxide would be emitted per year from 230 households, but over 6,000 tons per year of sulfur dioxide would be emitted into El Paso's air per year if Asarco were to reopen per Asarco's permit application

20345: (Google El Paso's smoke and lots or mirrors and look at the first listing, or go to http://www.elpasotimes.com/search//ci_6040830).

Noel Roberts
West El Paso

Cancer Risk From Environmental Arsenic Can Last for Generations

Cancer Risk From Environmental Arsenic Can Last for Generations

Chilean study finds rates for malignancy were still high decades after clean-up

-- Robert Preidt

TUESDAY, June 12 (HealthDay News) -- Decades after residents of a region in northern Chile were exposed to high levels of arsenic in their drinking water, they still suffer from high lung and bladder cancer death rates, concludes a study by U.S. and Chilean researchers.

The finding indicates a pattern of long-term arsenic-related health effects that hasn't been documented before, said the authors of a study in the June 12 Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"The results show that the risks of concentrated arsenic exposure are extraordinarily high, and that they last a very long time, both after initial exposure, and after the exposure ends," principal investigator Allan Smith, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, said in a prepared statement....

SOURCE: University of California, Berkeley, news release, June 12, 2007

Posted by Brandi Grissom on June 21, 2007 at 10:36 AM [El Paso Times Austin coorespondent] in her blog [http://elpasotimes.typepad.com/capitol/]

"U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, sent a letter this week to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, asking the commissioners to reject Asarco's request to renew its air quality permit."..."I'm posting the whole letter here, so you can read it yourself:Download asarco_tceq_letter_6.18.07.pdf
"

Sault Ste Marie - low water exposes dangerous sediment

[sounds like the Rio Grande below Asarco El Paso....]

Low water levels along the St. Mary's River have likely uncovered more than a century's worth of contaminated sediment, says a member of the joint U.S. and Canadian group charged with monitoring the troubled waterway.....

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US Gov. says that Bankruptcy doesn't protect Asarco from YAK Tunnel Colorado mine environmental cleanup

Asarco LLC, a bankrupt mining company, can`t use bankruptcy and a
joint-venture structure to absolve itself of the need to prevent a
disaster at its former lead and zinc mine, the US government said.
http://www.mining-journal.com/Breaking_News.aspx?breaking_news_article_id=2904

EPA Water Headlines - June 18, 2007 (arsenic)

Water Headlines for June 18, 2007 Benjamin H. Grumbles Assistant
Administrator Office of Water

Water Headlines is a weekly on-line publication that announces publications, policies, and activities of the US Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water

In This Week?s Water Headlines:
1) New Products Released to Help Small Systems Meet Regulations Controlling Arsenic in Drinking Water
2) EPA Seeks Drinking Water Utilities for Contaminant Warning System Pilot Projects
3) Watershed Academy June 21st Webcast to feature STORET?EPA?s repository of water quality monitoring data
4) Subscribe to Water Headlines

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/arsenic/compliance.html

ASARCO Is Deceiving the Public

ASARCO Is Deceiving the Public

ASARCO can’t be trusted. The people of El Paso have
not been fully informed about the prior occurrences
with ASARCO, nor as to the validity of any research
that ASARCO claims will show that they never polluted.

ASARCO illegally burned DOD hazardous chemical weapons waste here in El Paso during the 1990’s, and they didn’t have a license to do so. They did it once and they will do it again. The CONTOP tower that they hold so highly is used by many European smelters to process hazardous wastes; they used it here in El Paso to process hazardous wastes. They broke the law and got a slap on the wrist when they were caught. Why? Because America (the rest of the country) is foaming at the mouth, or looking for, a place to get rid of all its toxic garbage, and El Paso seems a nice out of the way place to do so.

The aspect of creating jobs is acting as a smokescreen
to keep the focus off of the real issue of environmental racism.
Scott / Central El Paso

NO A LA ASARCO 9 AM SAT 16'th

TCEQ and Sham Permitting

To:  Mr. Harrison, Mr. Patterson and Mr. Nelson, OPA and OAG contacts
Fr:   Heather McMurray, El Paso TX
cc:   Mary Mahaney

sb:  Sham Permitting

Thank you for your email.  The Permit 4151 is a sham in regards to "no-increase".  There is no way to re-open the ore-handling process on that ore-handling-pad at Asarco El Paso and say that emissions won't increase unless the TCEQ is ignoring the Toxic Contamination from Encycle, Corpus Christi, TX.  There has been no "decontamination" of this Asarco El Paso site.   The smoking gun memo (authenticated) that the SOAH Judges refused to allow as evidence during the 2005 Asarco El Paso Air hearing lets us know that contamination is being concealed from the peoples of this region by high officials in the EPA and the TCEQ.   To discuss the 4151 permit as a "no-increase" permit as if it is a legitimate process is ludicrous when we now know that illegal toxic-waste was brought in, handled and incinerated in our ConTop furnaces for profit, and that it was stored on that ore-handling pad.

The contamination is still being concealed, and we would like to know what is being concealed, before any more permits are renewed or allowed.   The entire permitting/SOAH process has become a sham-process because the TCEQ and EPA continue to hide the contamination from Asarco's sham-recycling; and, the ConTop's permitting in 1992 conned the public into thinking that these furnaces were there to reduce emission when they were there to make monies as hazardous waste incinerators.

We want the responsible EPA and TCEQ officials to step down, and for honest officials to take their place, to let us know what contamination has been concealed, and for clean-up to begin.

Mary Mahaney wrote:

Good afternoon Ms. Murray:

 

The renewal application for Permit 4151 is a "no-increase" renewal, therefore there will be no comment period after the RTC (response to comments document), and no period for filing further hearing requests.  The RTC will be mailed out with a letter setting the date for Agenda.  The timely hearing requests (those received within 15 days of the original notice) will be considered at Agenda.

 

The comment period for this permit renewal application closed 15 days after the original notice.  There will be no further opportunity to comment.

 

If I can be of further assistance, please contact me at (512) 239-2427 or by e-mail (mmahaney@tceq.state.tx.us).

 

Sincerely,

 

Mary Mahaney

Air Permits Division

Open Records Coordinator

>>> <heamc@earthlink.net> 6/7/2007 1:02 PM >>>

Thank you, Mary,
Since the technical review is still on-going for the Asarco El Paso ore-handling permit #4151, please confirm that the public comment period remains open for this permit?

Attached is my original request for party status on this permit.

Heather McMurray

Rocky Flats workers told to go home and die

(Rocky Mountain Arsenal quench water came to El Paso for smelting)

URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5580337,00.html
"Rocky Flats workers face likely denial of compensation

Board members say their hands are tied

By Laura Frank And Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
June 11, 2007

Barring any "shocking" revelations, there is "little chance" that a White House advisory board will vote Tuesday in favor of immediate compensation for most sick Rocky Flats workers, said the board member in charge of the Flats case....."

Water and Air to breathe may become more precious than Copper

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2643033.ece <http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2643033.ece>
The wrath of 2007: America's great drought By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles Published: 11 June 2007

America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still....
...the long-term implications are escaping nobody. Climatologists see a growing volatility in the south-east's weather - today's drought coming close on the heels of devastating hurricanes two to three years ago. In the West, meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests a movement towards a state of perpetual drought by the middle of this century. "The 1930s drought lasted less than a decade. This is something that could remain for 100 years," said Richard Seager a climatologist at Columbia University and lead researcher of a report published recently by the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).....Across the West, farmers and city water consumers are locked in a perennial battle over water rights - one that the cities are slowly winning. Down the line, though, there are serious questions about how to keep showers and lawn sprinklers going in the retirement communities of Nevada and Arizona. Lake Powell, the reservoir on the upper Colorado River that helps provide water across a vast expanse of the West, has been less than half full for years, with little prospect of filling up in the foreseeable future.....According to the NOAA's recent report, the West can expect 10-20 per cent less rainfall by mid-century, which will increase air pollution in the cities, kill off trees and water-retaining giant cactus plants and shrink the available water supply by as much as 25 per cent....