ASARCO

'ASARCO, Inc.' is a major producer of copper and other metals. Headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, it is a subsidiary of Grupo México, a Mexican mining and railroad company.
ASARCO's products include copper, bismuth, bismuth selenide, antimony, arsenic, arsenic selenide, cadmium sulfide, cadmium telluride, copper selenide, lead, lead telluride, selenium, sulfur, tellurium, zinc, litharge, test lead, bismuth oxide, silver, and gold.
Founded in 1899 as the American Smelting And Refining COmpany, it officially changed its name to ASARCO Incorporated in 1975. Meyer Guggenheim and his sons took over the company in 1901. In 1916, 17 ASARCO employees were killed and mutilated by Pancho Villa's men, one of the incidents that sparked the US Military's Punitive Expedition against Villa.
In 1999, a hundred years after its founding, it was bought by Grupo México, which itself began as ASARCO's 49%-owned Mexican subsidiary in 1965.
On August 17, 2005, ASARCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Corpus Christi, Texas under then-president Daniel Tellechea.

Contents

Pollution and Environmental Issues

References

External links

Pollution and Environmental Issues

ASARCO's name is attached to 19 Superfund sites around the U.S. They are:
#The Interstate Lead Company facility in Alabama;
#Vasquez Boulevard and I-70 in Colorado;
#Lowry Landfill in Colorado;
#California Gultch mine and river systems in Colorado;
#Summitville Mine in Colorado;
#Globe Plant in Colorado;
#Bunker Hill Mining in the Coeur d'Alene River Basin in Idaho;
#Circle Smelting Corporation in Illinois;
#NL Industries/Taracorp lead smelter in Illinois;
#Cherokee County lead and zinc mine and surrounding area in Kansas;
#Oronogo-Duenweg mining belt in Missouri;
#East Helena smelter and surrounding residences in Montana;
#Kin-Buc Landfill in New Jersey;
#Tar Creek (Ottawa County) iron and zinc operations and surrounding residences in Oklahoma;
#Tonolli Corporation smelter in Pennsylvania;
#Ross Metals smelter and surface water in Tennessee;
#Murray smelter in Utah;
#Richardson Flat tailings in Utah;
#Commencement Bay, Near Shore/Tide Flats smelter, groundwater, and residences in Tacoma and Ruston, Washington.
#Former location of South side Park in Chicago, old home of the Chicago White Sox
The first environmental lawsuit was brought against Asarco in 1910 by a group of farmers in Solano County, California for the sulfur dioxide emissions from the company's San Francisco Bay smelter. The court granted an injunction that shut down the smelter, and the decision was upheld by the California Supreme Court. One of Asarco's lawyers then got a committee appointed, which included a company-appointed chemist, which led to a settlement that limited the smelter's release of sulfur dioxide to 30 tons per day. The settlement did not address lead, and scores of horses died of chronic lead exposure in the area in the following decades.
''United States v. Asarco'' rulings have been unfavorable to the company in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington.
In the 1970s, the Centers for Disease Control found that the Asarco smelter in El Paso, Texas was responsible for abnormally high lead levels in children who lived nearby. The city won a lawsuit against the company and, although denying guilt, Asarco agreed to strict monitoring for lead, zinc, cadmium, and arsenic releases as well as to provide medical exams and blood therapy to children with lead poisoning.
In 1995 ASARCO submitted a demolition and site cleanup plan to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality for their impact on downtown Omaha, Nebraska and a local residential area. Fined $3.6 million in 1996 for discharging lead and other pollutants into the Missouri River. Omaha's ASARCO plant was closed in July, 1997.^[1] After extensive site cleanup, the land was turned over to the City of Omaha as a 23-acre park. All of North Omaha, comprising more than 8,000 acres (32 km²), was declared a Superfund site, and as of 2003, 290 acres (1.2 km²) had been cleaned.^[2]
In January 2003, Asarco and the Environmental Protection Agency set up a trust fund of $100 million to help pay for the company's environmental clean-up costs. Actual estimated costs for clean-up were between $500 million and $1 billion, as of 2006.
One stated reason for declaring bankruptcy was the number of pending lawsuits (Daniel Tellechea identified "numerous environmental-related lawsuits brought by governmental authorities and private parties"). Asarco had more than 100 civil environmental cases pending against it when it filed for bankruptcy.
In January 2003, nearly 3 years prior to the bankruptcy filing, Asarco sold its interest in Southern Peru Copper to Grupo Mexico for $765 million. This transaction was carefully reviewed and approved by the U.S. Department of Justice. $100 million of the proceeds from this transaction were used to establish the aforementioned environmental remediation fund. Due to the historically low copper prices prevailing in late 2002, contemporary independent valuation reports show that Grupo Mexico paid a 20% premium to fair market value to acquire the Southern Peru Copper interest. Following the Asarco bankruptcy, Grupo Mexico's profits rose sharply (along with Asarco's and every other copper mining firm in the world), due primarily to the 500% rise in the market price of copper from January 2003 to today. Half of this increase occurred in the 18 months immediately following Asarco's bankruptcy filing.

References

1. (n.d.) Early Omaha: Gateway to the West: American Smelter and Refining Company Omaha Public Library.
2. (2003) National Priorities List Site Narrative for Omaha Lead. United States EPA.

External links

★ ASARCO corporate website

★ ASARCO company history

★ Grupo México history

★ Marilyn Berlin Snell, "Going for Broke" ''Sierra Club Magazine'', May/June 2006.

★ Michael E. Ketterer, The ASARCO El Paso Smelter: A Source of Local Contamination of Soils in El Paso (Texas), Ciudad Juarez (Chihuahua, Mexico), and Anapra (New Mexico), 2006.

★ Corpus Christi's Refinery row