Last American primary lead smelter to close in December

[jimpeel]

Why is this being posted in Law and Civil Rights? Because this will affect your ability to purchase ammo for your firearms and will thus take away your right to arms. This is like the government saying "You can have the most powerful, fastest car you want; but we are closing down all of the refineries which manufacture gasoline."

So what is a primary smelter? It is a smelter which is at the source, the mine, and refines the raw ore into the final product. The Doe Run smelter is the last primary lead smelter in existence in the U.S. At the point that they close their doors the only source for lead, and thus the only source for the manufacture of bullets, will be secondary smelters, which recycle existing lead, and foreign sources.

So what happened that Doe run will be closing their doors? The EPA increased the regulations on lead by 1000% to unattainable levels. The cost to Doe Run to reach the levels the EPA had demanded would have cost them $100,000,000 with no guarantee that the EPA would not increase the regulations further.

So first the EPA took the lead out of our gasoline and now they have taken the lead out of our firearms. (Not the same lead, I know.) The overarching reach of the EPA now threatens the very security of the United States; because how are we supposed to win a war if the only sources of materials for bullets is from re-smelting and possibly hostile foreign sources? I guess we could melt down all of the wheel weights ... oh, yeah, they're no longer made of lead. So much for that source.

SOURCE

Last U.S. Lead Smelter to Close in December Due to EPA – Might Affect Ammo Production
October 28 2013
by Dan Cannon

Doe Run made significant efforts to reduce lead emissions from the smelter, but in 2008 the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for lead that were 10 times tighter than the previous standard. Given the new lead air quality standard, Doe Run made the decision to close the Herculaneum smelter.

SOURCE

Has Obama Won The War Against Lead?

By Pat Henry / 30 October 2013

Therefore, Obama has been very busy behind our backs. He is, as in other areas, misusing the vast Federal regulatory leviathan to do his will, circumventing our elected representatives. One area which has had zero coverage in the media is his war against lead, needed to make bullets, which he has just won. In keeping with his policy of destroying jobs and sending American industry overseas, the Obama EPA has just caused the shutdown of America’s last lead smelting plant owned by the Doe Run company in Missouri, by increasing its pollution standards by 1000%, which would have required the company to spend $100,000,000 to comply. The company had no choice but to close its doors, and put 145 workers on the street.

 

[Slamfire]

The shut down of this plant is not as simplistic as banning guns. There are other considerations , such as the lead pollution in the area:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_54400025-2940-5b3f-b753-6e931e596cac.html

In early 2007, the EPA found high concentrations of lead in dust collected on roads near Doe Run's Herculaneum smelter; trucks leaving mines in Reynolds, Iron and Dent counties have at times been coated with lead. Spills of lead ore and concentrate also have occurred in the mining district and have not always been cleaned to acceptable levels, the EPA said.

Tests conducted last year of 372 properties within a mile of the Herculaneum lead smelter found 129 properties contained lead at levels beyond the EPA's allowable limit of 400 parts per million. Of those, 104 properties had already undergone EPA-ordered soil remediation in the last nine years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_Run_Company

Pollution at the U.S. operations[edit]
Doe Run has been cited regularly by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for infringing emission limits, contaminating roads and generally polluting the immediate vicinity of the smelter.[7] Exceeding of emission limits has resulted in the reduction of the permitted capacity of the Herculaneum smelter.[1] Road contamination has resulted in orders to clean up certain roads and to wash down vehicles before they go onto public roads.[8] The company has also been ordered by the EPA to address issues relating to elevated lead blood levels in the community and lead in community soils adjacent to the smelter. It has also spent US$10.4 million on buying up to 160 residential properties close to the smelter that are contaminated and is to clean up contaminated soils.[9] The company has paid for research developing an electro- chemical replacement, Flubor[10][11] for primary smelting of lead ore.[12]

Based on what I read, I would not want to live next to this nasty lead plant. Unless the Obama administration has banned the importation of lead, I am certain the Chinese are quite willing to pollute their county into a stinking cesspool, as it already is in many of their cities, by smelting lead and selling the ingots to Americans.

 

[thallub]

i second everything Slamfire said.

In 1968 the EPA tightened air quality standards for lead. The Doe Run company made the decision to close their plant. The company has other primary lead smelters overseas, probably in China.

Years ago the company raised the height of the smokestack. That had the effect of spreading lead pollution over a much wider area.

In the late 1980s my SIL worked for an environmental remediation company that cleaned up part of that plant. There were four inches of lead dust on parts of the roof.

Decades ago, the smelter filled the air of the company town with particulate matter so heavy, it sometimes made it impossible to see even across the street.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_415c0f78-03ee-5ed1-b533-75c1921ea038.html

The Environmental Protection Agency announced today that St. Louis-based Doe Run -- North America's largest lead producer -- has agreed to spend approximately $65 million to correct violations of environmental laws at ten of its lead mining, milling and smelting facilities in Missouri. The settlement also requires the company to pay a $7 million civil penalty.

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/da..._close_herculaneum_smelter_spend_millions.php

The settlement:

http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/cases/civil/mm/doerun.html

 

[Technosavant]

I find it hard to mourn the loss of lead in gasoline.

As for Doe Run, that plant has been on the news occasionally here in STL- about every year or so there was some kind of story about problems caused by the pollution from the plant.

While the loss of domestic lead smelting might be bad, that particular plant won't be missed.

 

[dogtown tom]

jimpeel Why is this being posted in Law and Civil Rights? Because this will affect your ability to purchase ammo for your firearms and will thus take away your right to arms.

Hogwash. This is a nonstory.................it isn't the "last lead smelter in the U.S." as the headline says, but the last lead ore smelter.

Lead-Acid battery production accounted for over 85% of domestic lead consumption last year. Every other use, including ammunition, only uses up 15%. This plant that is now closing produced 118,000 tons of lead last year, out of a domestic consumption of 1,520,000 tons...

Sierra Bullet Company:

"Should not affect us at all. That (Herculaneum MO plant) is a ore smelting plant only and we do not use lead that came directly from ore. None of our lead came from that facility and the facilities we do use are still up and going strong. Thanks!"

 

[Bezoar]

the problem is,

its not just the new regulations but how it was being tested.


the plant has been putting out lead particles into the environment for what, 70 years? its hard to test the soil for contamination if most of the soil samples come from land that has been polluted for 70 years. lead does build up in you.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

OK, that's enough - it seems an environmental issue that might actually have some merit. Seems not a grand conspiracy.

Thus, closed.