Saturday, February 16, 2008
SWOP homepageFNS 2/13: Texas Gives Green Light to Copper Smelter
Note from SWOPblogger: ASARCO is an environmental injustice icon. Get the Lead Out has additional information. Here's what bloggers are saying, according to google.Austin, Texas, FNS news - Despite widespread cross-border opposition, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has given a mothballed El Paso plant the go ahead to once again start smelting copper. At a February 13 meeting in Austin, Texas, TCEQ commissioners voted 3-0 to give the American Smelting and Refining Company (Asarco) a five-year air quality permit.
Asarco's air permit request was opposed by numerous non-governmental organizations and governmental entities from Texas, New Mexico and Ciudad Juarez. Straddling the Rio Grande, Asarco's El Paso smelter is located directly across the river from Ciudad Juarez and within one mile of the New Mexico border.
Smelter opponents contended a reopened smelter would degrade the binational Paso del Norte airshed, which already suffers significant pollution levels.
"This smelter has had a sad history of fouling the air and potentially harming the health of citizens in Southern New Mexico," said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who wrote a letter of concern to Texas Governor Rick Perry prior to the TCEQ's long-delayed decision.
TCEQ commissioners argued that current state law forced officials to grant approval to Asarco’s permit. “If I were king for the day, the Texas Clean Air Act wouldn’t look anything like it does today,” said Commissioner Larry Soward, who was quoted in the El Paso Times. The TCEQ did attach a number of recommendations and conditions to the permit, including the setting up of four lead monitors for the smelter.
Spokespersons for Asarco were pleased by the TCEQ’s decision. “You don’t have to choose between jobs and the environment,” Asarco attorney Pam Giblin said to TCEQ commissioners. “You can really have both.”
The City of El Paso, which was among several parties formally contesting Asarco's permit application, had unsuccessfully lobbied the TCEQ to postpone the February 13 meeting because of pending, unresolved issues
related to the smelter’s operation.
Austin attorney Erich Birch, who represents the City of El Paso, told Frontera NorteSur that upcoming US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lead emissions standards which could go into effect later this year are
expected to mandate stricter limits than are currently on the books. Also, the City of El Paso plans to petition the TCEQ to revoke Asarco's permission to operate because of alleged violations of the company's air permit that happened before Asarco suspended its operations in 1999, Birch said.
Last but far from least is the issue of who is responsible for Asarco. Embroiled in Texas bankruptcy proceedings, Asarco is owned by Grupo Mexico but controlled by a court-appointed independent board of directors that could sell off the smelter and its assets.
A subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, Asarco, Inc., is attempting to recuperate management control of the company. Late last month, Asarco, Inc. announced it would not reopen the smelter if it regains management authority. In a statement, the company pledged to work with environmental authorities and the community to clean up contamination at the plant site.
"There's all this stuff in limbo," Birch said, adding that he didn't expect the smelter to reopen overnight. Meanwhile, the City of El Paso has the right to appeal the TCEQ's action to state District Court, according to Birch. "I'm sure the City will appeal this decision," he said.
The TCEQ's February 13 meeting in the Texas state capital drew hundreds of smelter critics and supporters who traveled from the borderlands. Groups turning out the troops included the Sierra Club, Sunland Park Grassroots Environmental Group, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and Citizens Organized for Integral Community Development of Ciudad Juarez. After the TCEQ's decision was announced, anti-smelter activists staged a protest rally outside the agency's Austin offices.
Environmental activists plan to press their fight. The controversy spread to Mexico's federal Chamber of Deputies last week, when legislators passed a resolution that requested the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs invoke the 1983 La Paz Agreement between Mexico and the US and raise the issue of Asarco with both the TCEQ and the EPA. The Mexican congressmen seek compensation for Ciudad Juarez neighborhoods allegedly contaminated by lead and other heavy metals from Asarco's previous operations.
The Mexican congressional resolution also requested that the possible reopening of Asarco be discussed at the next meeting of the Joint Advisory Committee for the Improvement of Air Quality scheduled for February 28 in El Paso. Made up of government representatives and citizens from both sides of the border, the committee reviews pollution control strategies and issues recommendations for the Paso del Norte international air basin.
Additional sources: Newspapertree.com (El Paso), February 13, 2008. Articles by Sito Negron. Norte, February 12, 2008. Article by Herika Martinez Prado. El Diario de Juarez, February 12, 2008. El Paso Times, January 24, 2008; February 9 and 13, 2008. Articles by Brandi Grissom and editorial staff.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu
Labels: Envirionmental Justice, US/Mexico Border
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No one wants the smelter to reopen - not Mexico, not New Mexico and not El Paso TX. But there is a fraud/cover-up. In the ASARCO bankruptcy proceeding in Corpus Christi they are refusing to discuss the toxic waste handled and burned illegally by ASARCO in the 1990's. And, in the Paso del Norte region no one asks what toxic waste is here from that illegal burning.
They are dividing up the company assets, deciding what damages/liabilities they have to still pay for, and NOT DISCUSSING THE ILLEGAL TOXIC WASTE that got into the Paso del Norte soils, air, the Rio Grande and the international Hueco aquifer.
Meanwhile, just several miles up river from the El Paso smelter the 2nd largest N.M. regional dump is renewing a ten year permit -- and its application still allows it to accept (radioactive) Uranium mining and milling waste into that dump. That radioactivity will outlast the dump's liners. That dirt would be blown all over the region, and the isotopes would flow with the dirt during rain and wind events into the dump's unlined storm ponds to likely flow down the documented Sunland (park) surface fault (that extends along sunland park drive and then the edge of the dump) into the aquifer below. (A whole pile of that waste sits up at Coyote Canyon in Navajo N.M. land, stockpiled by EPA Region 6).
It is time that the community asked what EPA Region 6 is hiding, what Asarco is hiding --- what all these powerful concerns are hiding from us about what ASARCO poisoned us with. Has anyone seen a dioxin report on the Paso del Norte region? No. Has anyone seen a comprehensive beta radiation level plot graphed of our region? No. Has anyone seen a comprehensive chemical analysis of the Asarco pond-dirt that Asarco felt was bad enough that they railed it all the way back to Corpus Christi? No. What about a PCB report/chemical analysis? No. Can the EPA water lab find the chemical report and records for when they came out here in 2001 to try to duplicate Rio Grande samples from an unpublished UTEP masters thesis (running a mini double membrane osmosis treatment system at the Canal street station)? NO.
Are we and have we been sacrificed? YES.
The powers that be must think that we are ignorant stupid people down here in El Paso to sit idly by and simply ask for the smelter to be CLOSED without asking WHAT ARE THEY HIDING and WHAT TOXIC WASTE IS HERE??????????
They are dividing up the company assets, deciding what damages/liabilities they have to still pay for, and NOT DISCUSSING THE ILLEGAL TOXIC WASTE that got into the Paso del Norte soils, air, the Rio Grande and the international Hueco aquifer.
Meanwhile, just several miles up river from the El Paso smelter the 2nd largest N.M. regional dump is renewing a ten year permit -- and its application still allows it to accept (radioactive) Uranium mining and milling waste into that dump. That radioactivity will outlast the dump's liners. That dirt would be blown all over the region, and the isotopes would flow with the dirt during rain and wind events into the dump's unlined storm ponds to likely flow down the documented Sunland (park) surface fault (that extends along sunland park drive and then the edge of the dump) into the aquifer below. (A whole pile of that waste sits up at Coyote Canyon in Navajo N.M. land, stockpiled by EPA Region 6).
It is time that the community asked what EPA Region 6 is hiding, what Asarco is hiding --- what all these powerful concerns are hiding from us about what ASARCO poisoned us with. Has anyone seen a dioxin report on the Paso del Norte region? No. Has anyone seen a comprehensive beta radiation level plot graphed of our region? No. Has anyone seen a comprehensive chemical analysis of the Asarco pond-dirt that Asarco felt was bad enough that they railed it all the way back to Corpus Christi? No. What about a PCB report/chemical analysis? No. Can the EPA water lab find the chemical report and records for when they came out here in 2001 to try to duplicate Rio Grande samples from an unpublished UTEP masters thesis (running a mini double membrane osmosis treatment system at the Canal street station)? NO.
Are we and have we been sacrificed? YES.
The powers that be must think that we are ignorant stupid people down here in El Paso to sit idly by and simply ask for the smelter to be CLOSED without asking WHAT ARE THEY HIDING and WHAT TOXIC WASTE IS HERE??????????
This is what happens when we let a bunch of redneck facist republicans take control of our state government
# posted by 
: 9:10 AM
: 9:10 AM
When environmentalists stop using our products, I will stop mining, for instance, cat litter, food, houses, copper wires, schools, cars and many other things like computers, phones, and many more. They are all two faced. Move out in the desert and stay out of our mines....fredquimbyminer@yahoo.com
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# posted by : 7:47 AM
: 7:47 AM Links to this post:
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