AT the same time the Doe Run Co. was assuring the public it was redoubling its efforts to clean up the mess from its lead smelter in Herculaneum, company lawyers were busy trying to get it off the hook.

Kind of makes you wonder how much Doe Run cares about public health and the environment.

In the past two months, the state Department of Natural Resources has clamped down on Doe Run for polluting Herculaneum streets with lead and other toxic materials from trucks hauling lead ore to the smelter. The DNR tightened the screws and ordered a faster cleanup after tests last summer found extremely high levels of lead (300,000 parts per million, or more than 750 times the level considered safe) as well as arsenic, cadmium and nickel in dust along streets used as hauling routes. The state Department of Health declared an emergency, warning that lead in the air, soil and houses was a serious health threat, especially to children and pregnant women. High levels of lead in the blood can cause neurological and kidney damage, developmental delays, diminished intelligence and other serious health problems.

Under an agreement reached last year with state and federal environmental agencies, Doe Run has made some efforts to clean up. It is sweeping and hosing down contaminated streets; washing lead-dusted truck beds and tires; sealing an employee parking lot contaminated with lead dust; tying tarps more securely on trucks; rerouting trucks to minimize the amount of lead pollution; digging up contaminated soil in backyards and city streets.

But DNR Director Stephen M. Mahfood says the company's efforts have been hit-or-miss, and that material from the trucks is still blowing all over town. He has issued several "cease and desist" orders to force Doe Run to improve what he calls unacceptable "basic housekeeping measures."

Doe Run is protesting those actions, and has filed appeals with Missouri's Air Conservation, Clean Water and Hazardous Waste commissions. The appeals automatically put the DNR orders on hold for 60 days, or until the commissions can meet to hear the appeals. Doe Run argues that the DNR orders are illegal, its facts are wrong and the so-called "clear and present danger" to the public and the environment is nothing of the sort.

That's why it is so important for the state to continue to keep the company - which continues its long tradition of denial - under close scrutiny. The state is putting inspectors in Herculaneum around-the-clock, monitoring air quality more closely, checking the insides of houses and going door to door offering free blood lead testing.

All that information would be critical ammunition in the likely event that the state hauls Doe Run into court. The stakes are high: high for Herculaneum and its 2,400 residents, for the environment, for Doe Run and for the state of Missouri. If testing shows high blood lead levels, the people affected must be evacuated. If not, that's good news for residents. But the state will have to continue to press the smelter to clean up its act.

Looming in the background is perhaps the biggest question: Who will have to pay for the cleanup? Cleaning the surface lead contamination is a constant and costly chore, which Doe Run is now paying for. But keep digging below the surface, and who knows what they'll find? If the contamination is serious enough to declare Herculaneum a federal Superfund site, the cost of cleaning up the town could run into the billions. And that's a tab Missouri should not get stuck with. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should step up and put its weight behind the cleanup effort so that the people of Herculaneum can live in a safe and healthy community.





Published in the Editorial section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sunday, October 21, 2001.
Copyright (C)2001, St. Louis Post-Dispatch