WA: State, federal experts knew about contamination from Asarco smelter--did nothing

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Agencies failed to take steps to clean up toxins

State, federal experts knew about contamination from Asarco smelter

Thursday, April 20, 2000

By ANGELA GALLOWAY mailto:angelagalloway@seattle-pi.commailto:angelagalloway@seattle-pi.com

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

CAPITOL CORRESPONDENT

State and federal government agencies failed to take action to clean up arsenic and lead-tainted land downwind from the now-defunct Asarco smelter, despite early indications that there might be significant contamination.

Yesterday, the day after the release of a new study that shows dangerous levels of cancer-causing chemicals in soil downwind of the smelter, agency officials cited priorities and lack of resources. Cleanup efforts were first directed at the highly contaminated area immediately around the plant, and are continuing there today, they said.

"The agencies focused their attention on where the problem was the greatest," said Mary Kay Voytilla, an EPA project manager for cleanup of the smelter.

The state Department of Ecology made the same choice, said Tim Nord, section manager for the department's toxics cleanup program.

"We've got a lot of sites," Nord said. "It's all a matter of priority."

"It wasn't necessarily a high priority to us at that time. It clearly is to us now. That's what all this data is telling us. We've got an issue that we have to deal with."

Nord noted that many feared more rigorous standards would cost jobs at the plant.

"It was an economy vs. the environment kind of thing," Nord said.

The new study, conducted by Public Health-Seattle & King County, found high arsenic and lead levels in the soil of Vashon and Maury islands and in King County waterfront communities from Federal Way to Burien. Soil samples showed as much as 23 times the amount of arsenic allowed by state law and five times the legal lead limit. Earlier studies, including a 1985 study by the EPA and the University of Washington and a study conducted a few years ago by island residents opposed to the reopening of a gravel mine on contaminated soil, also found high levels of arsenic in the soil.

State law requires cleanup when more than 20 parts of arsenic are present in a million parts of soil in residential areas. The most recent study found up to 499 parts per million of arsenic, while the 1985 study found up to 290 parts per million.

Long-term exposure to heavy doses of arsenic can cause skin, bladder, kidney, liver and lung cancer. Children exposed to lead are at risk for learning difficulties, reduced growth and decreased mental abilities.

A multicounty pollution agency tried in vain to push for cleaner standards in the last two decades the plant operated, said Jim Nolan, director of compliance for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.

In hearing after hearing, health experts and others disputed the medical effects of the toxins, he said.

"Our agency was trying to regulate that in the 1960s and 1970s and up until it closed in 1984," said Nolan.

"We had a number of regulatory actions against the company (including fines and environmental controls). But it wasn't easy to get the company to do anything and there wasn't the strong public sentiment at the time."

Nolan's agency, formerly called the Puget Sound Air Pollution Control Agency, was largely out of the picture after the plant closed. Responsibility for regulation then focused on the federal EPA and state Ecology Department.

Nolan said he finds irony in an outcry that has arisen a decade and a half after the plant closed.

"Nobody was too burned about this when it was in operation," he said. "That blows our mind."

But Tom Martin, site manager of the Tacoma plant, said warnings from King County officials on Tuesday to test young children's blood for the presence of lead and limit exposure to potentially tainted dust were premature because the data have not been finalized or reviewed by Asarco.

Martin said that no one has confirmed health effects from the smelter's plume. He added that the county's test samples were taken in undisturbed forest areas, "which reflect the highest results possible."

In 1983, the Commencement Bay area -- including the smelter site -- became one of the EPA's first Superfund sites. But John Arum, a board member of the Washington Environmental Council and a Vashon Island resident, said political will to force the plant to clean up its emissions was lacking. "They were not willing to take the political heat of shutting this facility down," Alum said.

"We got here because this company was allowed to spew arsenic out into the atmosphere for the last hundred years without a lot of environmental regulation," said Arum, a lawyer who represents some residents fighting plans to put a gravel mine on the island. "It's certainly the company's fault. . . . After the 1960s it was also the fault of the governmental agencies for allowing this to continue."

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-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), April 20, 2000


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