Canadian company questions cleanup law in appeal

A Canadian company is asking a federal appellate court to reconsider a recent ruling that it is subject to U.S. law for polluting the Columbia River.

Vancouver, B.C.-based Teck Cominco Ltd. has asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to assemble judges to reconsider a July 3 ruling by a three-judge panel.

In its July 17 appeal, the company says the question of whether a foreign company is subject to U.S. Superfund cleanup law is a “question of exceptional importance” that should be resolved through diplomatic negotiations, not litigation.

Teck Cominco operates a large lead-zinc smelter at Trail, B.C., 10 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border, which has contaminated the Columbia for a century with heavy metals and smelter slag. It stopped discharging slag into the river in 1994.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers Teck Cominco a major polluter of the upper Columbia, which includes Lake Roosevelt, the 150-mile impoundment of the river behind Grand Coulee Dam.

In 2004, two leaders of the Colville Confederated Tribes sued in U.S. District Court in Spokane in an effort to compel the EPA to order Teck Cominco to clean up Lake Roosevelt. It was the first time a Superfund “citizens’ suit” had been brought against a foreign company. Washington state intervened on the side of the Colvilles.