State joins pollution lawsuit

Washington Gov. Gary Locke and Attorney General Christine Gregoire announced Tuesday they’re joining the Colville Confederated Tribes’ recent lawsuit against Teck Cominco Ltd., a Canadian mining company that has polluted the Columbia River for decades with millions of tons of industrial slag and toxic mercury.

The state’s decision to join the Colvilles’ lawsuit, filed in July in U.S. District Court in Spokane, is an effort to force Teck Cominco to comply with a December 2003 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency order to clean up Lake Roosevelt under U.S. Superfund laws. Legal experts say it’s the first time a foreign company has been sued under Superfund laws.

Washington state wants heavy metals in sediments along the shoreline and bottom of Lake Roosevelt to be cleaned up to protect public health. Implementing the EPA order “is the quickest way to complete the studies and begin cleaning up the lake,” Locke said.

The state decided to join in after it was shut out of closed-door diplomatic negotiations between Canada and the White House over the transboundary pollution issue, said David Mears, senior assistant attorney general. “We thought the EPA was headed in the right direction, and then a curtain came down,” Mears said.

The state’s decision came as a surprise to the Colvilles, said Joe Pakootas, chairman of the tribes’ Business Council. “I feel great about this. It will put more pressure on Teck Cominco, and it may help bring justice,” Pakootas said.

Teck Cominco owns North America’s largest lead-zinc smelter, which sits on the banks of the Columbia at Trail, B.C., about 10 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border. Its pollution has traveled south into Lake Roosevelt, the impoundment of the Columbia behind Grand Coulee Dam, and onto the Colvilles’ tribal lands.

In a recent speech at Gonzaga Law School, Gregoire signaled her unhappiness with the Bush administration’s “quid pro quo” approach to Teck Cominco’s pollution. Major U.S. mining and electrical utility lobbying groups have recently told the White House they oppose using Superfund against Teck Cominco because Canada and Mexico could then retaliate for air and water pollution generated by American companies.

On Tuesday, Gregoire said Teck Cominco should be forced to clean up its mess.

“Teck Cominco can’t send highly toxic pollution across the Canadian border and then insist that the border protects them from liability,” said Gregoire, who is running for governor.

Teck Cominco, not the American taxpayer, should have to pay for the Lake Roosevelt cleanup studies, said Dan Opalski, the EPA’s top regional Superfund administrator in Seattle. Meanwhile, as the impasse with Teck Cominco continues, the EPA has launched its own Lake Roosevelt study using Superfund dollars, Opalski said.

Last week, Teck Cominco filed a motion to dismiss the Colvilles’ lawsuit. In a press release, the company said the issue should be resolved through “appropriate diplomatic channels, not through unilateral action by one side which inevitably leads to the courts.”

Teck Cominco is still willing to pay approximately $13 million to study heavy metals contamination in Lake Roosevelt, said Tom Merinsky, director of investor relations.

“We are disappointed the legal process continues to move along. We’d much rather sit down and come up with a cooperative solution,” Merinsky said. Negotiations with the EPA over a cleanup plan broke off last year.

Teck Cominco has balked at Superfund’s joint and several liability legal provisions, which the company said could leave it with much of the Lake Roosevelt cleanup tab even though other companies also contributed to the pollution.

Washington state’s willingness to join the Colville lawsuit is good news for citizens living along the Columbia near the Canadian border, said Matt Wolohan, a Northport-area beekeeper. Wolohan is a member of Citizens for a Clean Columbia, a group that wants the slag-covered beaches along the upper Columbia to be cleaned up.

“I’m very happy. This gives more credibility to the Colvilles’ claim. Hopefully Washington state sticks with this and the State Department doesn’t cave in,” Wolohan said.

Teck Cominco dumped nearly 10 million tons of slag, an abrasive byproduct of lead and zinc smelting that contains heavy metals, into the Columbia over 60 years, records show. It stopped dumping slag into the river in 1994. The company has also dumped tons of toxic mercury into the river over decades, according to previously-undisclosed Canadian documents recently obtained by The Spokesman-Review.

Teck Cominco, with headquarters in Vancouver, B.C., is a world leader in the production of zinc and metallurgical coal and is also a major producer of copper and gold. It has U.S. subsidiaries in Alaska and Washington state.