Tucson-based Asarco LLC has dropped plans to reopen its copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. Instead, the company will demolish down the smelter due to a "dramatic downturn of the world economy."
The company's announcement came on the same day that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told Texas officials that under federal law, the smelter did not qualify for the permit renewal that Texas gave it last year.
Without a reconsideration by Texas, the EPA might be forced to formally object to the permit, order any work on the smelter stopped, and initiate enforcement action, Acting EPA Regional Administrator Larry Starfield told Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Executive Director Mark Vickery in a letter dated Tuesday.
The smelter was in such poor condition that the EPA considered it permanently "shut down," meaning it required a complete new permit instead of a renewal of its old permit, Starfield wrote.
In addition, he wrote, new federal rules on ozone, lead and airborne particulate matter necessitated new reviews, endorsing opponents' arguments that the TCEQ rejected.
Asarco's plan to restart the smelter, northwest of downtown El Paso and just yards from Juarez, Mexico, stirred a six-year battle that pitted the company and its supporters against the city of El Paso and local and statewide environmental advocates. Opponents decried the 7,000 tons of pollution that the facility's permit would allow each year.
The first smelter opened on the site in 1887, and since then, successive generations worked there processing metals. Originally smelting lead, the facility's operation contributed to the contamination of surrounding neighborhoods and elevated lead levels in local children. The smelter became a nationally recognized symbol of community struggles over pollution and lax government oversight.
Source: Dallas Morning News
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