Asarco Smokestacks Are Demolished as Part of Effort to Clean Up and Redevelop Industrial Site.
What happened to Asarco?
Asarco LLC (American Smelting and Refining Company) is a mining, smelting, and refining company based in Tucson, Arizona, which mines and processes primarily copper. Asarco’s smelting plant in El Paso, Texas, was suspended in 1999 and then demolished on April 13, 2013.
What did Asarco smelter do?
For almost 100 years, the Asarco Company operated a copper smelter in Tacoma. Air pollution from the smelter settled on the surface soil of more than 1,000 square miles of the Puget Sound basin. Arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals are still in the soil as a result of this pollution.
When did Asarco close?
Although the smelter shut down in 1999, as recently as last year, Asarco sought to renew its air emissions permit to restart the blast furnaces. Widespread opposition in El Paso and across the river in Juarez, Mexico, became a case study of a community’s fight for environmental justice.
Who is the CEO of ASARCO?
Struggling copper producer Asarco LLC on Thursday named a new president and CEO with a background in another troubled metals business. Joseph Lapinsky, 57, president and CEO of Ohio-based specialty steelmaker Republic Engineered Products Inc., replaces Doug McAllister, who had served as interim CEO since December 2005.
Who bought ASARCO?
Sterlite Industries
MUMBAI: Sterlite Industries (India) on Saturday announced the acquisition of Asarco Llc, a Tucson-based copper mining, smelting and refining company, for $2.6 billion in cash.
What did Tacoma Asarco smelter do with its slag material?
Asarco poured hot slag into Com- mencement Bay to cool and harden, creating an artificial shoreline. Approximately two-thirds of the plant area at the smelter facility and the entire yacht club peninsula are slag.
How long did Smeltertown exist?
EL PASO – Smelter Town, a deserted ghost town on the north side of the Rio Grande inhabited for a century starting in the late 1880s by residents who worked for the copper smelting company that would become ASARCO has no inhabitants but is loaded with history.
How tall was the Asarco smokestack?
Considered at the time an engineering gem, it was constructed of 2.5 million bricks, approximately 5,000 tons of mortar and stood 571 feet tall, making it then the largest smokestack in the world.
What metals do you smelt?
14.2. Metal smelting and refining processes generate wastes that may contain multiple hazardous metals, such as lead, zinc, nickel, copper, cadmium, chromium, mercury, selenium, arsenic, and cobalt. These elements may be found in the ores used or they may be added as mixed metals into the melts to produce metal alloys.
What is the history of the ASARCO plant?
The ASARCO plant site had nearly 100 years of history, beginning as the Ryan Smelter, a lead-refining company built by investor Dennis Ryan in 1888. Two years later it became the Tacoma Smelting and Refining Company, under the ownership of William Rust (1850-1928) who began modernizing and expanding the facility.
What does ASARCO stand for?
Rust sold the plant for $5.5 million in 1905 to the American Smelter and Refining Company (ASARCO), which converted the plant for copper smelting and refining in 1912. In the 1920s the Port of Tacoma granted a 30-year lease of harbor land to the American Smelters Securities Company to allow for an extensive plant expansion.
What happened to the ASARCO smelter?
Although the smelter shut down in 1999, as recently as last year, Asarco sought to renew its air emissions permit to restart the blast furnaces. Widespread opposition in El Paso and across the river in Juarez, Mexico, became a case study of a community’s fight for environmental justice.
What happened to the largest smokestack in the world?
The ASARCO smokestack — once the world’s largest — is demolished at the company’s old copper smelter in Ruston, north of Tacoma, on January 17, 1993. By Margaret Riddle.
