After 6-Yr Delay, EPA Investigates Smelting Slag In WA Reservoir

[hatrack]

"As the fine black sand sparkles alongside the blue waters of Lake Roosevelt, it's hard to believe it is the source of an international dispute. But the granular material is not sand. It's slag — waste from the giant lead and zinc smelter located a few miles north in the Canadian town of Trail, British Columbia. The slag is extremely fine and looks like it contains glass chips. It is so light it floats. Much of it ended up on the shoreline, turning white beaches black.

At a diplomatic impasse with a Canadian company over cleaning the pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in April launched a $20 million study to determine if the beaches, fish and plants along Lake Roosevelt are safe for humans. The study comes six years after it was first requested by the Colville Confederated Tribes, whose reservation borders the lake. "Finally we are out here in the field doing bread-and-butter work," said David Croxton, manager of the EPA's Upper Columbia River unit.

This is not the way the EPA wanted the study to proceed. The agency demanded in late 2003 that Teck Cominco Ltd., owner of the smelter, pay for the study. But the company, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, refused, saying it is not subject to U.S. law. The dispute is now in the hands of diplomats for the two nations.

Last summer, Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, told the EPA that he opposed a Superfund cleanup for Lake Roosevelt due to concerns about the precedent it could set. Some U.S. mining and electric companies fear Canada would have grounds to complain about air and water pollution from their operations."

EDIT

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/washingtonstate/index.ssf?/base/news-13/1114887195122170.xml&storylist=orwashington

[whistle]

1. Comes from Canada, but are the companies owned...

...and controlled by American corporations? I think so, just like most other major companies north of the border.