Zinc producer settles suit over Alaskan mine waste

Tag : zinc

By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Zinc producer Teck Cominco Ltd(TCKb.TO: Quote ) has agreed to pay up to $120 million for a wastewater pipeline tosettle a lawsuit by Inupiat Eskimo villagers who claimed minepollution was fouling their drinking water and the fish that are astaple of their diet.
The settlement, terms of which were filed in U.S. District Court inAnchorage on Wednesday, ensures that waste from the Red Dog mine inAlaska will bypass the river that is the water and food source forresidents of the village of Kivalina, said Luke Cole, the attorneyrepresenting the villagers.
"The settlement calls for construction of a pipeline from the minesite to the ocean, so that the mine will not be discharging intothe Wulik River or tributaries of the Wulik River," said Cole, whois lead attorney for the San Francisco-based Center on Race,Poverty and the Environment.
The pipeline will run about 50 miles, according to the settlement.Teck Cominco has estimated the project will cost less than $120million, Cole said, adding that he did not know the precise cost.
The settlement calls for the company to pay plaintiff attorney feesof $2.35 million and to pay a civil penalty of $8 million to $20million if the pipeline is not built, Cole said. The settlementalso commits Teck Cominco to pay penalties of $625 to $12,500 forany future violations of wastewater-discharge limits.
The Red Dog Mine is operated by Teck Cominco on land owned by NANACorp, the regional corporation for Northwest Alaska's Inupiatpeople. The mine is an economic mainstay for the region. Kivalina,a Chukchi Sea village with 400 residents, is the closest communityto the mine.
The 2004 lawsuit alleged that the Red Dog Mine had thousands ofClean Water Act violations in the late 1990s. U.S. District CourtJudge John Sedwick eventually whittled that number to 824violations for which Teck Cominco could be liable, and a trial onan additional 2,200 alleged violations was set to start in May.
The parties reached a tentative settlement just before the trialwas to have started, he said, adding that it took a few months towork out details of the settlement. Continued...