Federal officials on Thursday touted the record-breaking payouts for environmental cleanups that resulted from Tucson-based Asarco's emergence from bankruptcy.
The payments to cleanup efforts totaled nearly $1.8 billion, they noted, including full funding of Superfund cleanups at 24 sites in 13 states.
"We've received the largest recovery of money for environmental cleanup in U.S. history," said Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli. "This was certainly a result that no one expected when Asarco went into bankruptcy."
A half-dozen of the 80 total sites that are being cleaned with Asarco's copper money are in Arizona. They include:
• The long dormant Helvetia copper mine site, 28 miles southeast of Tucson. About $1 million went to clean up that site.
• Three historical mine sites: the Sacaton mine northwest of Casa Grande, the Salero mine northwest of Patagonia and Trench mine sites south of Patagonia. Those cleanups were funded by a land exchange that took place in the bankruptcy, valued at $30 million.
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• The existing Asarco smelter site in Hayden, which received $13.5 million to clean up copper, lead and arsenic and averted having the town designated a Superfund site.
• The cleanup of Mineral Creek and part of the Gila River basin near Hayden and Kearny, about $3.8 million.
The biggest recipients of cleanup funds were the site of a former lead smelter in Omaha, Neb., and a former mine site on the Idaho-Washington border.
All the settlements were negotiated between Asarco and state and federal governments during the bankruptcy process and had been previously announced.
While the EPA and the Justice Department proudly announced the outcome Thursday, the same agencies made an ultimately unsuccessful effort, just seven years ago, to settle Asarco's environmental cleanup responsibilities in court.
In January 2003, the Justice Department announced it had come to a settlement with Asarco's then-owner, Grupo Mexico, that would force the parent company to put $100 million in an environmental trust fund.
In exchange for doing that, Grupo Mexico would be permitted to transfer Asarco's profitable South American subsidiary, Southern Peru Copper, to a different Grupo Mexico subsidiary.
A federal judge in Texas found last year that the transfer was fraudulent and led to Asarco's insolvency, a factor in the company's eventual bankruptcy.
The closing of the bankruptcy deal Wednesday ended a four-year battle waged by Grupo Mexico to reacquire the firm it first bought in 1999.
Grupo Mexico lost control of Asarco in December 2005 as part of the bankruptcy proceedings but won a court auction for the company last month by offering $2.2 billion to creditors together with an estimated $1.4 billion in cash held by Asarco.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com