Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

1. If renewed, Asarco’s permit will allow the release of more than 7,000 tons of new contaminants a year in El Paso’s air, including 6,673 tons of sulphur dioxide and 7.6 tons of lead; we have fought too hard for too long to clean up our air to again allow ASARCO to pollute;

2. For over 100 years, ASARCO has emitted thousands of tons of poisonous metals and toxins into El Paso’s air; despite the fact that the EPA has determined that ASARCO is the source of lead and arsenic in our soil, ASARCO incredibly continues to say that the dangerously high levels of lead and arsenic which have been documented by thousands of soil samples taken within three miles of the smelter came from someone else.

3. In dozens of sites around the US, Asarco has a long record of non-compliance and broken promises with respect to environmental regulations, consent decrees and contracts to clean up. ASARCO’s record of non compliance forced the EPA to sue ASARCO in US District Court and in a consent decree a $100m trust fund was created to force ASARCO to clean up contaminated sites in the US.

4. Asarco has demonstrated a pattern of sloppy management practices in regards to protecting the health of the members of this community, and when it has acted, it has acted only when and as required, not proactively.

5. Asarco has not stood up for its employees, some of whom, after many years of working at the smelter, are suffering life-threatening and debilitating health problems.

6. Asarco has not lived up to its commitments to the City of El Paso made in a settlement filed in 1999 and currently owes the City of El Paso money.

7. If the plant were to reopen, Asarco’s new owner, Grupo de Mexico, has demonstrated in other plants around the US that it is extremely unlikely to provide pay and health benefits as were enjoyed by employees in the past.

8. Based on recent court ordered inspections of the ASARCO El Paso plant, Grupo Mexico has stripped the plant of its valuable assets and done little or no maintenance at the facility;

9. Because so much of the plant is no longer operational or even physically on-site, the permit renewal should be denied out-of-hand and a completely new permit required.

10. $15 per hour jobs do not come with a lifetime license to pollute; to compete in a 21st Century of knowledge based jobs, El Paso must deal with a 19th century relic just as Omaha, Dallas and other communities have done; we can not attract new, high wage technology jobs with a lead smelter that emits 7,000 tons of pollutants right in the middle of UTEP and Downtown El Paso, Juarez.

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