Holden urges Doe Run to move residents away from smelter

ST. LOUIS -- Declaring "now it is time for action," Gov. Bob Holden on Tuesday said the Doe Run Co. should immediately move vulnerable residents of Herculaneum away from the town's lead smelter until cleanup efforts are complete.

In a letter released Tuesday, Holden used some of the strongest words yet from officials trying to get contamination under control in the Mississippi River town of 2,800, home of the nation's largest lead smelter.

The Democrat's request for quick and dramatic action stood in contrast to a proposal announced this week by U.S. Sen. Kit Bond. The Missouri Republican proposed a long-term study on the health effects of lead contamination on the town's children.

"We cannot study this issue any longer before acting on the information we already have," Holden said in the letter. Noting a state health report that found 45 percent of children tested on the smelter side of Herculaneum with high lead levels, Holden said "it is clear that we have a health crisis. The time for study is over. Now it is time for action."

The letter said Doe Run should "separate the people from the contamination" at once, but stopped short of saying Doe Run should buy the properties of families living close to the smelter. The Environmental Protection Agency already has set up a program that pays the tab if families with young children want to temporarily live elsewhere while their homes and yards are cleaned.

Holden spokesman Jerry Nachtigal said the governor wants Doe Run to take the relocation a step further, moving families away from the smelter side of town until lead exposure is brought back down to "permissible" levels.

The letter also called for another meeting between Doe Run and the state Department of Natural Resources, this time with Holden's staff present. The last meeting with Doe Run, hosted last week by the EPA, dismayed state officials who said the company offered no plans to make cleanup efforts more aggressive.

Doe Run spokeswoman Barb Shepard said the company was pleased that Holden was calling for another meeting. She also said Holden's call to move people away from the smelter was already made by the EPA before the voluntary relocation program began.

"That's the kind of thing that can be clarified in the meeting," she said.

'Dismayed' in letter

Another letter made public Tuesday, sent by DNR director Stephen Mahfood, highlighted the discord between state officials and Doe Run. Mahfood said officials were "dismayed and disheartened" by Doe Run's failure to produce a more aggressive plan of action following the findings of alarming rates of lead exposure.

"In response to repeated questions" about what Doe Run was going to do now, Mahfood said, "the company consistently replied that it has cleaned the yards, and the homes, etc.; that this is not a new problem; the lead is from lead paint; and other evasions. The company never provided an adequate response to the question."