WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to intervene in an appeals court ruling that holds Canadian miner Teck Cominco Ltd. (TSX:TCK.B) subject to a U.S. Superfund law for polluting the Columbia River, under which Teck may have to pay a share of an estimated $1 billion in cleanup costs.
A federal appeals court last year ruled that Vancouver-based Teck could have to pay a share of the cost to clean up Lake Roosevelt, a 240-kilometre stretch of the upper Columbia River behind Grand Coulee Dam.
The Columbia has been polluted for a century with heavy metals and black slag leaching downstream from Teck Cominco's lead and zinc smelter complex in Trail, B.C., 15 kilometres north of the U.S. border and about 215 kilometres north of Spokane, Wash.
The company asked the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court ruling, arguing that the Superfund law doesn't apply to a Canadian company discharging hazardous waste unless it "arranged" for the contamination to end up in the United States.
The pollution resulted from an "action of nature" - the southward flow of the river from Canada into the United States - the company said in court papers.
U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement said that for decades the company discharged millions of tonnes of hazardous substances into the river just north of the border. Likening the discharges to firing a gun across the border, Clement said "it was inevitable that the river would carry the pollution directly into the United States."
Virgil Seymour, a member of the local Colville Tribe's business council, said he was pleased with the top court's decision....
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