TRAIL, B.C. - On a beach in northeast Washington state near the
Canadian border, Patti Bailey grabs a handful of what looks like
sand and rolls the dark grains through her hands. It’s slag, the
grainy waste from the Teck Resources lead and zinc smelter in
Trail, B.C., about 10 kilometres north of the nearby Canadian
border. “They’re little time bombs and they’re releasing zinc,
copper, arsenic and other metals into the environment,” said
Bailey, an environmental planner for the Confederated Tribes of
the Colville Reservation. A Washington state judge has ruled
that Teck is liable for the costs of cleaning up contamination
in the Columbia River south of the border from decades of
dumping slag and effluent from the company’s Trail operations.
In a decision announced late last week, Judge Lonny Suko ruled
that, “for decades Teck’s leadership knew its slag and effluent
flowed from Trail downstream and are now found in Lake
Roosevelt, but nonetheless Teck continued discharging wastes
into the Columbia River.” Suko