Guest Action by Steve Brittle: Hayden and the Superfund

Hayden, Arizona is a small company town with one industry – the ASARCO copper smelter. This is one of the nation’s top polluters. ASARCO has admitted in public reports its releases into Hayden’s air of thousands of tons of arsenic, lead, barium, copper, zinc, and sulfuric acid over the years. It is now proposed that Hayden be declared an EPA Superfund site, but the company, and elements of the town and county government, are determined to resist.

ASARCO has left a trail of environmental contamination with over $1 billion in environmental cleanup liability around the country. When faced with the costs of these cleanups, the company instead filed for bankruptcy.

Governor Napolitano has to concur with the decision to list Hayden as a
Superfund site and will decide by September 20th. But given the actions
of ADEQ, obviously intended to sell out the community, she needs to
hear from everyone that she should concur with the EPA’s proposal to
designate the area a Superfund site. The people of Hayden need
everyone’s help to prevent them from their continuing toxic nightmare.

Please contact Governor Janet Napolitano by mail, phone, and/or fax, and urge her to concur with the EPA’s proposal to list the town of Hayden as a Superfund site.

Janet Napolitano, Governor of Arizona
1700 West Washington
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Telephone (602) 542-4331
Toll Free 1-(800) 253-0883
Fax (602) 542-1381

More about the story of ASARCO’s history in Hayden and the effort to clean up ASARCO’s mess after the click…

The reports of high levels of arsenic in the air in Hayden were published in the Arizona Republic starting in the 1980s, along with the
town’s history of high lung cancer incidence. There have been such high
lead levels in children’s blood that the state health department has
had to investigate, and there are a host of other health issues that
locals attribute to ASARCO’s emissions.

Local citizens and Don’t Waste Arizona members helped push to get the
EPA Superfund investigation into Hayden, which ASARCO bitterly opposed.
Soils samples and the air are so contaminated that EPA wants to list
Hayden on the National Priorities List (NPL), also known as Superfund.
According to the EPA, "The sampling has found widespread arsenic, lead
and copper well above background and safe residential levels in the
town of Hayden.

Elevated levels of arsenic have also been found in the groundwater,
which may impact drinking water supplies for both Hayden and Winkelman.
Contamination from arsenic in the air is 90 times the federal standard.
The levels of lead in the town’s soils were up to 7,000 background
levels; arsenic levels were up to 540 times normal; and copper was
found at up to 25,000 times normal.

ASARCO doesn’t want the Superfund listing, and proposes to handle the
cleanup itself. With the help of the mayor of Hayden, who is an
employee of ASARCO, a “special meeting” of the town council was called
with minimal notice to the locals, with the intention of fixing the
deal for ASARCO. Shirley Dawson, a corrupt Gila County Supervisor, was
there to suggest a Superfund status would affect the town’s “tourism
industry.” She also pointed to an asbestos cleanup in Globe that left
some real estate in limbo years after the initial site work, and blamed
EPA for not following through, only to find out that it was instead an
ADEQ-managed site, hence the inactivity and failure in oversight.

When the word got out about the “special” meeting, there was not enough
room for all the local citizens who showed up, and they made it quite
loud and clear that they wanted EPA to oversee the cleanup, not ASARCO
and its cohort, the ever-complicit ADEQ.

ADEQ sent a representative, Mike Fulton to attend the meeting, who has
admitted that he will be advising the governor about the decision, yet
ADEQ has planned no meeting, town hall, or any outreach at all to the
local affected citizens about the issue, which is an overwhelmingly a
Latino population. There have been civil rights complaints filed with
the EPA against ADEQ for its handling of Hayden’s issues over the
years, and Fulton’s activities are a classic example of this pattern.
As confirmed
by EPA, individual results will not be made available to residents
whose yards were tested until long after the governor makes her
decision, with clear intent to deny the public at large any say at all
in this decision.

ADEQ has also consistently refused to enforce the air quality laws in the town. It is quite a common occurrence to have illegal releases of acids and heavy metals at night.
Steve Owens, ADEQ Director, has admitted his inspectors have seen the
illegal nighttime activity but that someone from his agency tips off
ASARCO when inspectors are planning to observe at night and videotape
the violations.

The ADEQ has done nothing for the citizens and defenseless children of
Hayden for the past 20 years except run interference on behalf of
ASARCO. Now the state proposes to take over control of any
cleanup/oversight to once again sell-out innocent citizens and children
of Hayden.

The EPA Superfund designation brings many resources to the poisoned
community that the state’s program doesn’t feature. In the EPA
Superfund program, communities are provided with information on
contamination levels and locations, and have an opportunity to have a
say in the cleanup. Communities get training and technical assistance
grants. With Superfund, there may also be opportunities for relocation.
ASARCO would still be liable for the cleanup, as would Kennecott, a
smelter company that previously operated in the town. The ADEQ’s
program is underfunded and cleanups are never completed.

State Rep. Pete Rios, D-Hayden, warned the audience at the “special
meeting” that if the town is not designated a Superfund site and ASARCO
doesn’t do the job, the state won’t necessarily pick up the slack.
"It’s going to be a cold day in hell before I get 88 other legislators
to fund the cleanup of Hayden," he said.

And as the behavior of ADEQ’s Mike Fulton indicates, ADEQ as usual, is protecting the polluter and not the citizens of Hayden.