EVERETT – Asarco owes Washington taxpayers $13 million for expenses related to the unfinished cleanup of an Everett neighborhood where the company once ran a lead smelter and arsenic plant, a state official said.
Washington is listed among Asarco’s top 20 creditors in papers filed in a Texas bankruptcy court earlier this week. The company described Washington’s claim as disputed, and did not specify the amount.
But David South, the state Department of Ecology manager overseeing the Everett cleanup, said Asarco owes the state $13 million. About half of the money is interest, he said.
The state’s Everett-based claim on Asarco dates back to a 1993 Ecology Department order to clean up 687 acres in north Everett.
Asarco tore down the smelter and a related arsenic extraction plant in the early 20th century. Houses were built there in the 1930s and ’40s. It wasn’t until 1990 that investigators found high concentrations of arsenic, lead and cadmium in surrounding soils and groundwater.
The $13 million debt is a combination of oversight costs and cleanup. Since 1999, the Ecology Department has removed and replaced dirt around 47 of 600 homes targeted for cleanup, South said.
In a separate development, the Everett Housing Authority bought some of the land in a deal that required Asarco to remove more hazardous soil. But Wednesday, after Asarco filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, the company halted the Everett Housing Authority cleanup.
Last year, after a court order, Asarco removed the worst of the contamination from a few acres where the smelter stood.
As for Washington’s standing on the top 20 creditors list, the state is one of four governments listed as having disputed and unspecified environmental claims. The others are the federal government, Texas and Arizona.
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