Dirty Money

by: Melissa del Bosque, The Texas Observer

Asarco smokestack in El Paso, Texas. Asarco is responsible for 75 contaminated sites in 21 states, including 20 Superfund sites, and more than 95,000 asbestos-related personal injury claims. After filing for bankruptcy in 2005, the environmental clean-up of Asarco sites remains uncertain. (Photo Art: Satxvike / flickr.com)

The fight to control one of the biggest polluters in US history, and what it means to Texas.

For more than a century, the American Smelting and Refining Co. extracted heavy metals from the earth, hauled them to smelters, and refined them into the lead, zinc, and copper products that fueled industry. Under the stewardship of exceedingly rich men, the company earned enormous profits while its industrial processes poisoned poor communities in nearly two dozen states. Now, with the company's future in doubt, the pollution may outlive the company that produced it.

American Smelting and Refining - better known as Asarco - was formed in 1899 by a group of industrialists that included William Rockefeller. In 1901, the Guggenheim family wrested control of the company from Rockefeller and expanded it. Asarco would become the nation's third-largest copper mining and smelting company. Asarco owns 38 facilities nationwide, including three in Texas: a metal refinery in Amarillo, a metal waste-treatment facility in Corpus Christi, and most notoriously, a smelter in El Paso that spewed lead and arsenic into surrounding neighborhoods for decades.

A century of pollution has made Asarco one of the dirtiest companies in American history. The company is responsible for 75 contaminated sites in 21 states, including 20 Superfund sites, according to federal court documents. Asarco is the subject of more than 95,000 asbestos-related personal injury claims totaling $750 million. In Texas alone, the state's environmental commission says it will cost more than $52 million to sweep away decades of lead and arsenic contamination from Asarco's smelting operations in El Paso. Nationwide, U.S. government officials estimate it will cost $7 billion to clean up Asarco's pollution, one of the most expensive environmental legacies the United States has ever seen.

(More here.)