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Asarco Tacoma: 26 years later
By Timothy Roberts
2/8/2009
Original article published 2/8/2009
El Pasoans are hoping for a quick cleanup of the Asarco site on the city’s Westside, but a similar cleanup in Tacoma, Wash., might indicate that will be a long time coming.
Twenty-six years after the Environmental Protection Agency put Asarco’s Tacoma smelter on its list of hazardous waste sites in need of cleanup, the people of Tacoma are still waiting for the final yard of contaminated soil to be removed.
It has taken more than a quarter of a century to get this far, but the project is considered “a model of cooperation among EPA, the local community and the potentially responsible part,” according to an EPA report.
As the Tacoma cleanup nears the 90 percent mark and about $100 million in costs, all hopes on are on a private land developer who has pledged $28 million more in cleanup funds. He plans to build condos and townhouses on the site. The big question now is whether the home building will survive the bad economic conditions that threaten developers everywhere.
“We knock on wood and hope he follows through all the way,” says Bliss More, a leader of the Sierra Club in Washington State. “There’s no other option for the community, and we don’t want this to turn into a brownfield.”
Asarco began smelting copper on the banks of Tacoma’s Commencement Bay in 1890, a few year after a smelter opened in El Paso.
And just as in El Paso, Asarco built a company town next to it, and a large city grew up around the smelter that today is in the heart of an urban area.
In Tacoma, there are sweeping views of the water and distant mountains, and a ferryboat plies the water for commuters and vacationers.
But it became clear by 1983 that that the Tacoma smelter had caused extensive environmental damage to the site. It closed in 1985, and according to More, Asarco began to work in earnest to clean up its site and reputation. It was community event when the smelter’s 562-foot smokestack was brought down.
“I think (Asarco) really wanted to make this cleanup site a model for what they can do across the country — one they really want to do right,” More said. “All the communities came together with Asarco and the EPA and bought off on this plan.”
A spokeswoman for the EPA’s Region 10 in Seattle said nearly all the money for the cleanup has come from private sources, primarily Asarco itself.
An Asarco spokeswoman said the company would not comment for this story.
The Tacoma cleanup stalled after the purchase of Asarco by Grupo Mexico in 1999 and then again in 2005 when the company entered bankruptcy protection. Now the hope is that developer Mike Cohen can finish the job.
“Our project is unique,” Cohen said. “The smelter was in the heart of a prime residential neighborhood next to some tremendous amenities. It has a lot going for it.”
Cohen plans to build 1,000 condos, townhouses and single-family homes, 120,000-square-feet of retail space and more than 100,000-square-feet of office space.
In addition to the estimated clean up cost of $28 million, Cohen made an upfront cash payment of $6.2 million. His development costs, he estimates, will be about $20 million.
He admits that the economy is taking its toll. Sales are only half of what he had projected. But, he says, “We are probably doing better than anyone else.”
The El Paso cleanup may take at least as long. For one thing the site is larger than the one in Tacoma. The Tacoma site is 97 acres. The El Paso site is about 400 acres. Asarco and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are talking about establishing a cleanup fund of $52 million, less than half of what it cost to clean up Tacoma.
Investigators wearing moon suits will have to drill thousands of holes in the ground down as far as 20 feet, says Neal Carman, who works on clean air issues for the Sierra Club in Texas. The results will have to be analyzed and then the pollution will have to be mapped all before the digging begins.
Expect to find lead, cadmium, arsenic and other metals, said Carman, who also worked for what was known as the Texas Air Pollution Control board. Also, PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls, a suspected carcinogen used until 1978 as lubricants and coolants particularly in electric equipment.
These cleanups “can go on for years,” he said. “It just depends what they find.”
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