The Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department announced on Friday that the Atlantic Richfield Company (AR) agreed to finish cleaning up the site of a former copper smelting site that the BP subsidiary had assumed control over all the way back in 1977. The Anaconda Co. Smelter was in operation for nearly a century. It closed in 1980; three years later it was deemed a superfund site by the EPA. According to a press release, the operation polluted soil across its 300-square-mile footprint, including in residential yards and industrial areas, contaminated creeks, surface water, and groundwater, and left dangerous waste products in its wake further contaminating the area.
While substantial work has been done to remediate and address many of these environmental concerns, the site still contains a handful of major areas that require cleanup, including a waste consolidation process that is expected to last over the next decade according to the EPA’s most recent background about the site. It’s not just the superfund site that AR will be cleaning up, either: Under a consent decree, the company must finish remediating residential yards in two towns and clean up soil in the areas above Anaconda. The company must also close its remaining slag piles, a waste product from copper smelting that contains known carcinogens like arsenic and lead.
