Hayden, Arizona is a small company town with one industry – the ASARCO copper smelter. This is one of the nation’s top polluters. ASARCO has admitted in public reports its releases into Hayden’s air of thousands of tons of arsenic, lead, barium, copper, zinc, and sulfuric acid over the years. It is now proposed that Hayden be declared an EPA Superfund site, but the company, and elements of the town and county government, are determined to resist.
ASARCO has left a trail of environmental contamination with over $1 billion in environmental cleanup liability around the country. When faced with the costs of these cleanups, the company instead filed for bankruptcy.
Governor Napolitano has to concur with the decision to list Hayden as a Superfund site and will decide by September 20th. But given the actions of ADEQ, obviously intended to sell out the community, she needs to hear from everyone that she should concur with the EPA’s proposal to designate the area a Superfund site. The people of Hayden need everyone’s help to prevent them from their continuing toxic nightmare.
Please contact Governor Janet Napolitano by mail, phone, and/or fax, and urge her to concur with the EPA’s proposal to list the town of Hayden as a Superfund site.
Janet Napolitano, Governor of Arizona
1700 West Washington
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Telephone (602) 542-4331
Toll Free 1-(800) 253-0883
Fax (602) 542-1381
More about the story of ASARCO's history in Hayden and the effort to clean up ASARCO's mess after the click...
The reports of high levels of arsenic in the air in Hayden were published in the Arizona Republic starting in the 1980s, along with the town’s history of high lung cancer incidence. There have been such high lead levels in children’s blood that the state health department has had to investigate, and there are a host of other health issues that locals attribute to ASARCO’s emissions.
Local citizens and Don’t Waste Arizona members helped push to get the EPA Superfund investigation into Hayden, which ASARCO bitterly opposed. Soils samples and the air are so contaminated that EPA wants to list Hayden on the National Priorities List (NPL), also known as Superfund. According to the EPA, "The sampling has found widespread arsenic, lead and copper well above background and safe residential levels in the town of Hayden.
Elevated levels of arsenic have also been found in the groundwater, which may impact drinking water supplies for both Hayden and Winkelman. Contamination from arsenic in the air is 90 times the federal standard. The levels of lead in the town’s soils were up to 7,000 background levels; arsenic levels were up to 540 times normal; and copper was found at up to 25,000 times normal.
ASARCO doesn’t want the Superfund listing, and proposes to handle the cleanup itself. With the help of the mayor of Hayden, who is an employee of ASARCO, a “special meeting” of the town council was called with minimal notice to the locals, with the intention of fixing the deal for ASARCO. Shirley Dawson, a corrupt Gila County Supervisor, was there to suggest a Superfund status would affect the town’s “tourism industry.” She also pointed to an asbestos cleanup in Globe that left some real estate in limbo years after the initial site work, and blamed EPA for not following through, only to find out that it was instead an ADEQ-managed site, hence the inactivity and failure in oversight.
When the word got out about the “special” meeting, there was not enough room for all the local citizens who showed up, and they made it quite loud and clear that they wanted EPA to oversee the cleanup, not ASARCO and its cohort, the ever-complicit ADEQ.
ADEQ sent a representative, Mike Fulton to attend the meeting, who has
admitted that he will be advising the governor about the decision, yet
ADEQ has planned no meeting, town hall, or any outreach at all to the
local affected citizens about the issue, which is an overwhelmingly a
Latino population. There have been civil rights complaints filed with
the EPA against ADEQ for its handling of Hayden’s issues over the
years, and Fulton’s activities are a classic example of this pattern.
As confirmed
by EPA, individual results will not be made available to residents
whose yards were tested until long after the governor makes her
decision, with clear intent to deny the public at large any say at all
in this decision.
ADEQ has also consistently refused to enforce the air quality laws in the town. It is quite a common occurrence to have illegal releases of acids and heavy metals at night. Steve Owens, ADEQ Director, has admitted his inspectors have seen the illegal nighttime activity but that someone from his agency tips off ASARCO when inspectors are planning to observe at night and videotape the violations.
The ADEQ has done nothing for the citizens and defenseless children of Hayden for the past 20 years except run interference on behalf of ASARCO. Now the state proposes to take over control of any cleanup/oversight to once again sell-out innocent citizens and children of Hayden.
The EPA Superfund designation brings many resources to the poisoned community that the state’s program doesn’t feature. In the EPA Superfund program, communities are provided with information on contamination levels and locations, and have an opportunity to have a say in the cleanup. Communities get training and technical assistance grants. With Superfund, there may also be opportunities for relocation. ASARCO would still be liable for the cleanup, as would Kennecott, a smelter company that previously operated in the town. The ADEQ’s program is underfunded and cleanups are never completed.
State Rep. Pete Rios, D-Hayden, warned the audience at the “special meeting” that if the town is not designated a Superfund site and ASARCO doesn't do the job, the state won't necessarily pick up the slack. "It's going to be a cold day in hell before I get 88 other legislators to fund the cleanup of Hayden," he said.
And as the behavior of ADEQ’s Mike Fulton indicates, ADEQ as usual, is protecting the polluter and not the citizens of Hayden.
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