Asarco, Union Pacific Railroad back in court over CdA Basin cleanup costs
BOISE – Eight years after paying out $482 million to fund cleanup from a century of mining contamination in North Idaho’s Silver Valley, the copper mining firm Asarco is back in court, demanding that Union Pacific Railroad pay it $130 million because it contends the railroad caused a big piece of the damage.
The railroad is furiously denying the claim. “This case is about history,” UP’s attorneys wrote in opening arguments filed with the court. “In this history, successful mining companies become wealthy, while managing their wastes by dumping them in the Coeur d’Alene River.”
They added, “Railroads did not generate the environmentally damaging mining waste, and the tailings mining companies gave or sold to some basin railroads for ballast would otherwise have been dumped in the river by the mining companies.”
Asarco LLC, a copper mining and smelting firm based in Arizona, settled its liabilities for the Coeur d’Alene Basin contamination as part of a 2009 bankruptcy settlement – but only on the condition that it could still go after other potentially responsible parties for a portion of the cost.
Read more: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/oct/30/asarco-union-pacific-railroad-back-in-court-over-c/