Tough Decision for Tacoma

The EPA poses a choice between cancer risks and jobs

Joggers in Point Defiance Park near Asarco Inc.'s mammoth copper-smelting plant sometimes complain that they can taste the air on windless days. With 575 workers, the 80-acre smelter, operated by Asarco since 1905, pumps some $35 million annually into the Tacoma, Wash., area economy. Unfortunately, the smelter pumps out arsenic, a deadly cancer-causing poison that is released directly into the atmosphere as a byproduct of copper refining. Last week EPA Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus announced details of a new federal air-quality standard for arsenic emissions. However, he left open a tough choice between a reduced but still clear risk of cancer for Tacoma residents and the loss of hundreds of jobs if the plant shuts down. Ruckelshaus' solution was a radically new departure in environmental policy: ask the community to help make the decision.

Ruckelshaus called on Tacoma to hold public meetings on the issue next month, with EPA officials participating. Said he: "People need to hear more of what the administrator of this agency hears from the scientists: mainly, that we have a lot of gaps in our knowledge. Most people think the facts are clear, but it is often true that there is enormous dispute over what the facts are. And we just can't sit there and let nature take its course."

The action represents more open-mindedness on the part of the EPA, which in the past has generally invited public discussion only after policy decisions have been made. Nonetheless, some environmentalists viewed the new approach as the kind of morbid cost-benefit analysis they have long opposed. Western Washington University Professor Ruth Weiner said that asking the community to determine what is best is "economic blackmail. People will vote for jobs and cancer." Warned Richard Ayres, head of the National Clean Air Coalition: "You're balancing money and lives, and they just don't balance."

The arsenic-emissions standard proposed by EPA and slated for public discussion primarily affects the Tacoma smelter, which is the only U.S. plant using arsenic-rich copper ore imported from the Philippines. The proposed standard requires the smelter to install the best available technology to lower its overall arsenic emissions to 189 tons per year from the 310 tons that annually belch from its 565-ft. smokestack and seep from other parts of the plant. Asarco is already spending $4.4 million to install hoods that should cut back emissions to precisely those levels. Despite these safeguards, Ernesta Barnes, EPA's Northwest regional administrator, maintains that "arsenic is toxic at any level" and Asarco's new hoods will "still result in emissions in the air." Counters Larry Lindquist, the smelter's plant manager: "We don't think cancer deaths can be related to the plant. There's been no proof that these emissions cause health problems."

Indeed, the precise threat of lung cancer, which takes from 13 to 50 years to manifest itself, is poorly understood. Says Stan Neff, 53, who has worked at Asarco for 18 years: "I've lived around here all my life and I'm not concerned about any health hazards. It's a lot better than it was 50 years ago." But Darcy Wright, a Tacoma homemaker who lives a mile from the smelter, worries about raising her four-month-old son. Says she: "Somehow I'm going to have to provide him with a protected area." Summed up Ruckelshaus, who stressed that he alone will make the final ruling: "The only way I know how to do it is to open it clear up. Let every bit of information we have out, and let the public wrestle with it the same as we do." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.