Keeping lead contained

A company at the Southeast Missouri Port Authority is sinking big money into a project to reduce the amount of lead concentrate that can make its way into the environment.

Workers with Girardeau Stevedores and Contractors Inc. are in the early stages of constructing a $4 million facility at the port to handle shipments of lead concentrate from the Doe Run Co.

Doe Run has been under scrutiny by the EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in recent years for lead contamination that has occurred along the routes driven by trucks loaded with lead concentrate. In 2003, between 20 and 25 pounds of the material was spilled at the SEMO Port harbor, which later led to plans for the facility now under construction.

Two hundred steel pilings driven into the earth between 70 and 85 feet will support a concrete floor 42 inches thick to house the concentrate while the material awaits loading onto barges headed for the Gulf of Mexico, said Lanny Koch, owner and president of Girardeau Stevedores. The structure will be able to support 175 to 180 pounds per square foot. The company's other material storage structures support only 60 pounds per square foot, Koch said.

Lead's high density means more support is needed to hold the material without collapse.

Work has begun on a storage structure for lead shipments at the Southeast Missouri Regional Port.

The warehouse, which includes a washing facility and storage tank to hold water contaminated with lead, will hold 12,000 tons of the material, enough for 10 barge loads.

"We could keep going the way we are," Koch said. "But there's issues ... I want corrected."

Like Doe Run, Koch's company bears the scrutiny of regulatory agencies by handling the potentially dangerous lead concentrate, which is about 75 percent lead. Making sure lead doesn't escape into the environment during its exchange from truck to barge at the port is something Koch said he's concerned about. If the lead can be handled safely, he said, there's no reason not to handle it at the port.

"Somebody's going to do it, and we want it here at the port," Koch said on a tour of the construction site Thursday. "We want the revenue."

That revenue from a large contract Koch's company has with Doe Run to handle its overseas lead shipments is making the construction possible.

Girardeau Stevedores began receiving shipments of lead concentrate from Doe Run's mines in 2003, using a process similar to that used today. Trucks loaded with lead concentrate enter the port and drop their loads off a dock into a barge waiting below, with windscreen devices in place to hinder lead concentrate particles from entering the environment -- a process which led to the spill of concentrate into the harbor.

The new facility will be equipped with telescoping chutes that can more efficiently load the lead concentrate onto barges with less risk of spillage.

Doe Run says construction of the new facility at the port is part of the company's campaign to improve its transportation practices in the wake of lead contamination found along haul routes in Reynolds, Iron and Dent counties.

"We recognize that there's better technology out there to handle concentrate," said Aaron Miller, environmental director of Doe Run's Missouri operations. "We went to other industry leaders around the world to see how they handle concentrate shipments by vessel and came up with a better plan to keep the lead from impacting the environment."

The EPA stopped taking public comment March 30 on an order that would require Doe Run to increase the precautions it takes in shipping lead ore and concentrate to reduce the volume of the material spilled into the environment. The order will be released soon.

Lead contamination along haul routes may be due to historical shipping practices that didn't take into account the consequences of lead's release into the environment. In recent years the federal and state agencies have tried to make sure safe transportation practices, like washing trucks before they leave mining facilities and putting tarps on the trucks, are implemented. But the EPA said in February that lead continues to contaminate roads.

The new proposals are a response to those findings, and they're already under fire from environmental groups and others who say the order won't go far enough.

Most of the contamination that's been discovered is due to historical trucking practices, Miller said.

"The lead levels that the EPA is finding along the haul roads today is from historic deposition, whether from haul trucks at the time or from other sources of lead," Miller said.

Robert Hinkson, an official with the DNR superfund section, said the amount of concentrate spilled at the port has been "significantly less recently" but that recent data seem to indicate some lead is still being lost in the transfer from truck to barge.

Miller said Doe Run contracts with Coleman Trucking Co. of Mineral Point, Mo., to haul lead concentrate to the port, but he doesn't know what routes the trucks travel to reach the port.

A worker at Coleman Trucking said Friday that no one was available to talk about the routes company trucks take to get to the port.

Hinkson said recently the most logical route would be to take Highway 72 into Jackson, then U.S. 61 to Center Junction, where trucks could access Interstate 55 to reach the port.

The EPA said it will sample soil along the haul routes to the port after the order regulating Doe Run's shipping practices is signed.

Lead concentrate isn't as dangerous as pure, smelted lead, because it isn't as easily absorbed by humans as pure lead when ingested.

"Shipping of lead concentrate, if it is handled appropriately and not released into the environment, does not pose a significant risk to human health," EPA representative Shawntell Martin said in an e-mail Friday.

But an EPA study has found that concentrate becomes more easily absorbed when it has been exposed to the elements for a year.

Koch and SEMO Port director Dan Overbey said any worries about safe transportation practices aren't a concern at SEMO Port, where trucks are covered with tarps and fully enclosed on their way to and from the facility and washed thoroughly before they leave the port.

"It has applied for all four years that SEMO Port has handled this traffic," Overbey said of the tarps in a recent e-mail. "This stands in stark contrast to those areas in the Lead Belt where, for several decades, the lead products were hauled in open dump trucks with no covers."

Overbey and Koch said they continue to work with regulatory agencies to ensure the amount of concentrate escaping into the environment is minimalized.

Lead is essential to products like batteries, TVs, X-ray equipment, automobiles and computers, said Koch, making it extremely important to the economy.

"Our society can't operate without it," Koch said.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182