Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

In the letter to the TCEQ, the EPA provides a list of equipment that would have had to be repaired to, as the letter concludes, "avoid a potential objection to the Title V permit, a stop work order ... and/or an enforcement action."

The letters assert that Asarco was permanently shut down under federal standards -- Asarco had claimed it was a temporary shut down -- and would have to rebuild much of its equipment and pass tougher new federal air pollution standards.

Asarco officials, contacted for comment, restated the message in the news release the company sent today -- that the decision had to do with the world's economy.

However, Asarco opponents noted the timing: "The EPA's letter to the TCEQ demonstrates that ASARCO is not merely another casualty of the current economic crisis and that in fact, local opponents to the permit were correct in arguing (from day one) that the plant should be held to more stringent standards as a new source due to its shut-down in February of 1999.

"By refusing to apply the law, the TCEQ has failed its mandate to protect the health and environment of El Pasoans, has caused the unnecessary expenditure of community resources and has further delayed the remediation of the site," stated Veronica Carbajal, a staff attorney for Texas Rural Legal Aid, which represented the group Acorn as an objector to Asarco's permit in the contested case hearings.

"What the real story is here is a community that rose against years of contamination and abuse. With this new administration, ASARCO's permit had to have a new Title V review and that's what stopped the 7000 ton permit," state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh said in a news release.