Missouri sues St. Louis lead company after pipeline spill polluted creeks with mine waste

[TexasTowelie]

By Jack Suntrup


JEFFERSON CITY — Doe Run Resources Corp. faces another round of environmental fines after one of its pipelines ruptured in 2014, contaminating two Missouri waterways in rural Reynolds County with waste from its Sweetwater Mine and Mill.

The Missouri attorney general’s office, on behalf of the Department of Natural Resources, filed a lawsuit against the Maryland Heights-based company on Friday in St. Louis County Circuit Court. The seven-page complaint accuses Doe Run of violating the Missouri Clean Water Law.

According to the state’s lawsuit, a pipeline that carried waste from the Sweetwater facility — the material left over after lead, copper and zinc are milled — to a nearby tailings pond failed in late October 2014, releasing about “880 tons of lead mine tailings in a gray-colored slurry.”

The slurry traveled downhill to a drainage area, where it flowed into Adair Creek, “turning the stream into the same gray color as the slurry,” the lawsuit says.

Read more: https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/missouri-sues-st-louis-lead-company-after-pipeline-spill-polluted/article_cc5bee35-73bc-5c33-921a-b14f214510f6.html

[Lulu KC]

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