Source: St.迷利倉 Louis Post-DispatchDec. 15--HERCULANEUM --THE 550-FOOT SMOKESTACK -- the same size as the Washington Monument -- towers over Main Street, a constant reminder of Herculaneum's deep roots as a company town.But now, the 121-year-old Doe Run Co. smelter, the last place in the country where lead taken from the ground is processed, is days away from closing, leaving questions about the town's identity and its future."Our legacy is the proud history of over 100 years of smelting activities here," said Gary Hughes, general manager of Doe Run's smelting division. "The smelter came and the town grew up around it. It's why there are houses located next to the smelter and the population lived so close to the facility. It's the tradition of the area and the community."The town of about 3,500 is a Superfund site, a federal designation for polluted areas.In 2010, Doe Run announced it would close the plant at the end of this year and pay $65 million to correct violations of environmental laws at 10 of its lead mining and processing facilities in southeastern Missouri.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the company "made a business decision" to shut down the smelter instead of installing pollution control technologies needed to reduce sulfur dioxide and lead emissions as required by the Clean Air Act.Doe Run said it saw no alternative to closing the plant because there isn't another process for smelting new lead that would meet the air-quality standard, which it says is the most restrictive in the world. It had hoped to build a new plant using a new, cleaner lead-production technology, but dropped the idea in 2012, saying the $100 million project was too financially risky.The company started this year with 296 employees; about 113 live in Jefferson County.The company will keep about 75 employees into 2014 to operate its refinery and strip mill and to prepare the property "for closure and repurposing," and 60 will be transferred to other Doe Run divisions. The company said that 16 employees would retire but that 125 employees and about 71 contractors would be out of work.The company set up a career center in the fall of 2012 to help employees with job interviewing and skills assessment."Whether you think there should be a smelter or not, and which side of the fence you're on, there are 300 good people through no fault of their own who are going to be impacted by the closing of the smelter," said Pat Garey, a Doe Run manager.A COMPANY TOWNFor decades, sirens sounded to announce shift changes, the first at 6 a.m. as a wake-up call for day-shift workers. Company carpenters did house repairs for residents. Before the town had a water system, people took baths in the plant's change room.Now Herculaneum, or Herky as the residents say, must figure out how to go on without Doe Run -- its jobs, tax dollars, financial contributions to local groups and its role in the Missouri, and global, economy.And how to deal with what a century of smelting leaves behind.Lead pollution has been found in hundreds of yards. Vacant houses sit behind fences in what's known as the "buyout zone," an area three-eighths of a mile around the smelter where most residents sold their homes since 2002 to Doe Run -- signs warn to keep out because of the contamination.Lead is a neurotoxin that interrupts normal brain development and has been linked to behavioral problems in children. Adults can tolerate higher lead levels than children but still can suffer health problems.Children who reach the federal standard of 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood are at risk of health problems that include reduced intelligence and impaired growth.Just 12 years ago, nearly half of 67 children tested who lived near the smelter had levels of 10 or higher, according to a state report. No children in Herculaneum tested that high recently -- of 341 children from ZIP codes covering Crystal City, Festus, Herculaneum and Pevely tested between January and October of this year, just eight reached that level. Six were from the Crystal City area and two from the Festus area.Jack and Leslie Warden learned that their son had dangerously high lead levels in the 1980s. They lived about three blocks from the Herculaneum smelter for 16 years."The smell and the stench and the fog -- we knew it was there," Leslie Warden said.The soot and dirt from the plant was so thick on their deck that walking through it left footprints. But they thought government agencies were keeping an eye on it.Testing on Herculaneum streets in 2001 found dangerously high levels of lead, up to 300,000 parts per million in places. A level of 1,200 parts per million is typically considered in need of urgent remediation in residential areas; that threshold drops to 400 parts per million if children live there."Do not allow children to play in the streets or on curbs," the signs warned, as well as telling residents to take off their shoes before entering their homes and to have children play on grass or at a nearby park in Crystal City.Gray, cinder-like slag left from lead processing was spread on Herculaneum streets for decades to give traction during bad weather. And the streets were used by trucks carrying lead before tighter washing procedures were adopted.The Wardens say the high lead levels on streets made many townspeople who previously had stood by Doe Run start to think twice."I raised my kid in this, and all the time they were telling us everything was fine," Leslie Warden said. "And it wasn't."They moved to Festus in 2004 after selling their house to Doe Run through a voluntary buyout negotiated two years earlier by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Their house in Herculaneum was torn down."Seeing the plant close is sad," Jack Warden said. "Families depend on that for their money. But it's what the company did that brought it to its knees."The Wardens filed a su迷你倉cessful lawsuit with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment that prompted the EPA to adopt tougher air quality standards for lead in 2008.The new standard is 10 times more stringent than the old standard for lead, dropping to 0.15 micrograms from 1.5 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air. It was the first time the agency had revised airborne levels of lead since 1978, when the metal was phased out of gasoline.When the new rules were announced, Jefferson County was one of two places in the nation that fell short of the old standard. The EPA identified Doe Run as the primary local source of that pollutant.The company did at times meet the old 1.5 standard, including for 30 months in a row ending in 2004, Hughes said.But it has never met the 0.15 level, the toughest in the world, he said.The Missouri Department of Natural Resources gauge at the high school, one of several around Herculaneum, shows that in August, the most recent data available, the monthly average was 0.26.The company has spent millions of dollars to clean up Herculaneum.It has replaced the soil in 781 yards at a cost of more than $14 million, and spends an additional $9 million a year to improve environmental performance. It will test more yards in 2014 and 2015.Doe Run has bought 144 properties through the buyout plan, and all but roughly 40 have been torn down. About 160 were eligible; some of those who opted against selling have agreed to sell to Doe Run through their estates. Doe Run leased some houses to people who sold but wanted to stay, but no longer leases any property. Some of the houses have been used in training exercises for fire departments and police agencies.LIVING WITH LEADDale Frank lives in a house on Brown Street with his stepfather, Lawrence Casey, who owns the house. Frank cares for Casey, who is 81.Frank said the house was within the buyout zone, but Casey never wanted to sell the house.Frank's mother designed the house, and his grandmother paid to have it built, he said. Contaminated soil in the yard has been dug up and replaced a few times, but Frank said he liked living there."The town of Herky, it grew on me," said Frank, who moved there when he was about 10. "The people are doggone nice."Casey was a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Doe Run that resulted in a $55 million settlement last year. He declined to be interviewed.Lawsuits with claims of adverse health effects linked to lead exposure have made their way through courtrooms in Jefferson County, St. Louis and St. Louis County for years. Most settlements are confidential.The Missouri Legislature overrode this year Gov. Jay Nixon's veto of a bill limiting large punitive damage awards against Doe Run in lawsuits alleging harm from some old lead mining operations.WHAT'S NEXTHerculaneum High School sits almost directly below the smelter's smokestack. It's part of the Dunklin School District, which has about 1,500 students from Herculaneum and Pevely.Last year, about $500,000 of Doe Run tax money made its way to the district, which has an annual budget of about $17 million."We know the assessed valuation is going to go down," Dunklin Superintendent Stan Stratton said of Doe Run. He's hopeful that a proposed port on the property will eventually bring that valuation back up and generate more tax dollars.Stratton said the plant closure would shift a heavier tax burden to the residents.The company's tax bill will be calculated this spring, said Terry Roesch, the Jefferson County assessor.The Herculaneum smelter pays nearly $2 million in taxes, the company said.The city gets between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, officials said.The smelter also buys a good portion of the water the city is contracted to buy, which means residents' water bills will probably increase when operations cease, said city administrator Jim Kasten, who is also a school board member and cross-country coach.He and Mayor Bill Haggard, who is also the town's fire chief and president of the historical society, grew up in Herculaneum near the smelter.Both speak of the value of the smelter beyond tax dollars -- the community events Doe Run sponsored, such as basketball tournaments and town celebrations.Doe Run employees donated more than 2,000 hours of community service last year, the company said.Doe Run paid to build the town's fire station a few years ago. Like many other town institutions, including the Joachim Golf Course and ballfields, it sits on some of the 600 acres the company owns in Herculaneum.As part of a 2010 settlement with the EPA, Doe Run was ordered to establish financial assurance trust funds, at an estimated cost of $28 million to $33 million, for the cleanup of Herculaneum and other active or former mining and milling facilities, the EPA said.In addition, the company must pay a $7 million civil penalty for violating a series of environmental laws. Doe Run said half of that would go to schools in Iron, Reynolds, Jefferson and Washington counties.Doe Run has paid about $166 million in salaries, wages and benefits since 2000. And the company says it's still looking into building a smaller plant that would use a cleaner technology, but it could be built somewhere other than Herculaneum.On Friday, the Doe Run plant will for the last time burn off sulfur from lead ore mined and milled from southern Missouri through what's called a "sintering process."Two days later, the blast furnace will smelt for the final time the product created in that process, known as sinter, into a molten bullion that will be refined into pure liquid lead.And then a new chapter in Herculaneum will begin."We're not quitters," said Kasten. "We stayed here, and we're going to work and fight to keep this town a sustainable, viable community."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at .stltoday.com Distributed by MCT Information Services自存倉
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