Doe Run Resources Corp. of St.
Louis, North America's largest lead producer, will spend $65 million to
correct violations of several environmental laws at 10 of its lead mining,
milling and smelting facilities in southeast Missouri, federal and state
agencies announced Friday.
As part of the settlement, Doe Run will
spend an additional $7 million to cover a civil penalty for violating a
host of federal environmental laws: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act,
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Emergency Planning and
Right-to-Know Act, and the Superfund law, and three Missouri laws: the Air
Conservation Law, Clean Water Law and Hazardous Waste Management Law.
The penalty will be paid by Doe Run in a
$3.5 million payment to the United States and a $1.5 million payment to
the state of Missouri, with an additional $1 million plus interest to be
paid to the state each year for the next two years.
"For more than a century, families in
Missouri's lead districts have endured one of the most harmful forms of
air and water pollution," said U.S. EPA Regional Administrator Karl
Brooks. "Lead's toll on their lives and health has been great, which
is why the outcome of this enforcement action is so important."
"We all share common goals for vibrant
communities, high-paying local jobs and improved environmental
performance," said Bruce Neil, president and chief executive officer
of the Doe Run Company. "The agreement enables the company to address
historical and more recent environmental issues, while still providing
jobs for our employees, strategic metal to our customers and the $1
billion economic benefit we provide to the region."
The Doe Run smelter on the banks of the
Mississippi River in Herculaneum, Missouri converts millions of tons of
ore into more than 125,000 tons of nearly pure commercial-grade lead every
year. In operation since 1982, this is both the nation's largest primary
lead smelter and its largest point source for lead emissions, with just
over 59 tons of lead released to the air in 2005, according to the
National Emissions Inventory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But at the end of 2013 Doe Run will shut
down its lead smelter at Herculaneum, a town of about 4,000 residents.
Company officials made a business decision
to shutter the smelter on December 31, 2013 instead of in 2016 as required
by state regulation for sulfur dioxide emissions and instead of installing
pollution control technologies needed to reduce sulfur dioxide and lead
emissions as required by the federal Clean Air Act.
"For more than a year, we've been
working with the community of Herculaneum toward repurposing portions of
our site in Herculaneum," said Neil. "We've spent nearly
$400,000 toward two port feasibility studies, donated land on which a new
bridge is being built to access the area, and we believe the location
could be an ideal site for a Jefferson County port. A port could provide
an estimated 2,000 jobs to the region."
The company will provide an initial $8.14
million in financial assurance to guarantee cleanup work at the
Herculaneum facility.
Closing the Herculaneum smelter is expected
to result in benefits to public health and the environment by annually
reducing air emissions of at least 101,000 tons of carbon dioxide, 42,000
tons of sulfur dioxide, 30 tons of lead, 23 tons of particulate matter, 22
tons of carbon monoxide, 13.5 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 2.5 tons of
volatile organic chemicals, according to the U.S. EPA.
The EPA said it expects these reductions to
result in "significant health and environmental benefits to the
Herculaneum and St. Louis areas," which are currently exceeding
federal air standards for lead, ozone and particulate matter.
"Four decades after taking the first
steps to remove lead from gasoline, EPA has reached this settlement to
keep significant amounts of lead from polluting Missouri's air, land and
water. This is a historic milestone, and it could not have happened
without the effective, energetic cooperation of Missouri's governor,
attorney general and Department of Natural Resources."
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster
said, "This settlement represents a big win for families who live in
Southeast Missouri. Children are particularly vulnerable to the harmful
effects of high levels of lead, and this settlement ensures that Doe Run
will take responsible actions to clean up the environment and protect
Missourians from dangerous pollution."
The settlement also requires Doe Run to
establish financial assurance trust funds, at an estimated cost of $28
million to $33 million, for the cleanup of Herculaneum and six active or
former mining and milling facilities: Brushy Creek, Buick, Fletcher,
Sweetwater, Viburnum and West Fork.
This commitment ensures that financing will
be available to fund the cleanup of the smelter property and the six
mining and milling sites whenever they are eventually closed.
Doe Run will also take steps to finalize
and come into compliance with more stringent Clean Water Act permits at 10
of its facilities, including Herculaneum, Glover, Buick Mill, Brushy
Creek, Fletcher, Sweetwater, Viburnum, West Fork, Mine #35 (Casteel), and
Buick Resource Recycling,
The company will spend an estimated $5.8
million on stream mitigation activities along 8.5 miles of Bee Fork Creek,
an impaired waterway near Doe Run's Fletcher mine and mill facility.
The company will also spend $2 million on
community-based mitigation projects to reduce pollution from other sources
in southeastern Missouri.
At least $1.1 million of this amount will
be spent on diesel engine retrofits, school science lab clean outs, school
energy efficiency projects and installations of heat pumps.
Other projects, such as the purchase of
sulfur dioxide allowances, wastewater infrastructure projects for the city
of Herculaneum, or the development and improvement of environmental
management systems at Doe Run's facilities may also be included.
In addition to the consent decree, the EPA
is issuing for public comment two administrative orders.
The first administrative order requires Doe
Run to sample residential properties within 1.5 miles of the Herculaneum
smelter, and clean up all residential properties with lead soil
concentrations of 400 parts per million or higher within that zone.
The order also requires Doe Run to conduct
a final round of soil sampling and residential property cleanups in
Herculaneum after the smelter is shut down.
The public is also invited to comment on a
modified May 2007 administrative order addressing issues related to the
transportation of lead-bearing materials between Doe Run facilities.
The modified order requires Doe Run to
spend an estimated $3.2 million to improve the washing and inspection of
its trucks, conduct additional sampling of soil from residential
properties along the haul routes, provide independent auditing of its
washing and inspection activities, and conduct a study to assess and
improve its transportation and handling operations.
The civil judicial consent decree is
subject to a 30-day public comment period and approval by a court before
it becomes final. Each of the two administrative orders is subject to
similar but separate 30-day public comment periods before they become
final.
Source:Newswire |