Editorial: Good-faith slag cleanup small start to long haul
A vice president of Teck American Inc. was frank and realistic in explaining his company’s plans to remove heaps of smelter waste from a strip of shore on Lake Roosevelt near Northport in Stevens County.
“We are not asking people to trust us. We want them to give us a chance to do what we said we would do. We need to improve our relationships,” David Godlewski told an Associated Press reporter.
Far more significant than the modest cleanup project on Black Sand Beach is the $20 million Teck is committed to spend studying the extent of pollution in the Columbia River and Lake Roosevelt, which are downstream from Teck’s zinc smelter in Trail, B.C.
For nearly a century prior to 1995, heavy metals from the smelter poured across the border and left deposits on the lake and river beds and the shoreline. An estimated 20 million tons of lead, zinc, mercury and arsenic compose the slag that accumulated across a much larger area than Black Sand Beach.
While the impending beach project reportedly is a voluntary gesture aimed at demonstrating Teck’s good faith to the state of Washington, funding for the more comprehensive study was agreed to only after the Consolidated Tribes of the Colville Reservation filed a lawsuit, which the state later joined, to get Teck to comply with the Environmental Protection Act. In 2008, the Supreme Court refused to overturn a federal court ruling that Teck, based in Vancouver, B.C., is subject to the American law when its waste fouls American waters.
Once the study is completed, it will provide baseline information for the condition of beaches and lake bottoms as well as the fish and their food chain. Still unaddressed: Who will be responsible for the cost of cleaning up the contamination once it’s quantified?
Even now, Teck clearly does not want to submit to the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations, preferring to negotiate its obligations to deal with years of mess.
It can’t be said the Teck has ignored its downstream impact. Years ago, the company installed filters at the Trail smelter to curb airborne emissions that were harming apple crops in Washington. The $20 million study was agreed to in 2006, although that was three years after EPA first approached the Canadian business.
So the Black Sand Beach cleanup is a commendable gesture. And we long have argued that a negotiated solution is preferable to a regulatory and legalistic one, which could invite an endless cycle of international retaliation.
Whatever strategy is employed, however, the ultimate measure of justice – and trustworthiness – will be if the polluter ultimately accepts responsibility for mitigating not just the damage to a Stevens County beach but a century’s worth of environmental damage between Grand Coulee Dam and the Canadian border.