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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Judge rejects dismissal of Teck Cominco lawsuit

Shannon Dininny Associated Press

YAKIMA — A judge on Monday rejected a Canadian mining company’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of polluting the Columbia River for decades.

Teck Cominco Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C., had argued the lawsuit should be thrown out because the U.S. government cannot impose rules on Canadian companies that operate on Canadian soil.

U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald disagreed, saying the United States’ environmental laws are intended to clean up pollution inside U.S. borders, regardless of where it originated.

“The Upper Columbia River Site is a ‘domestic condition’ over which the United States has sovereignty and legislative control,” McDonald wrote in a ruling issued out of Yakima.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency contends that heavy-metal pollutants flowed for decades down the Columbia River from Teck Cominco’s giant smelter in Trail, B.C., into Washington state waters. The lead-zinc smelter is about 10 miles north of the border.

Late last year, the federal agency demanded that the company pay to study how extensive the pollution was and point to a remedy.

The Colville Confederated Tribes of Eastern Washington sued the company in July for failing to comply with that order, and the state of Washington joined the lawsuit two months later.

D.R. Michel, natural resources chairman for the Colville Business Council and one of two tribal members who filed suit, said he was pleased with the ruling.

“We’ve been on this river for thousands of years, and what we’re mainly fighting for now is the future of the river and Lake Roosevelt and the legacy we leave our kids,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere. We still have a long ways to go after this ruling.”

The judge also automatically certified the case for appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. An attorney for Teck Cominco and a company spokesman did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment Monday night.

Teck Cominco had argued that imposing U.S. environmental regulations on a Canadian company operating inside Canada violates that nation’s sovereign rights and that the Canadian government should regulate businesses there.

Otherwise, the United States essentially imposes a zero discharge order on foreign companies operating in their own countries, the company’s lawyers argued.

The tribe and the state countered that the United States is well within its bounds to demand cleanup. They contend as much as 20 million tons of heavy metals from the smelter traveled down the river to Washington’s Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam.

A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency said the agency, which is not currently a party to the lawsuit, was pleased with the ruling.

“The judge agreed that Teck Cominco has deposited its waste into U.S. waters and is responsible for that waste,” spokesman Bill Dunbar said. “We believe the company, not U.S. taxpayers, ought to deal with that problem.”