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Show Western Resources WRAP-UP U.S. smelting industry problems ' Washington The U.S. smelting i industry is an endangered species; like the dodo bird it appears to be on the : road to extinction, according to the industry. ' Unlike other endangered species 5 which have a lot of supporters concerned con-cerned about their survival, the ) smelting industry appears to be going down the tubes without anyone "giving a damn," according to Rep. Jim Santini, D-Nev. Santini is holding a series of hearings on the plight of the smelting industry in i this country. tne nex scheduled in early February' here, in his capacity as chairman of the House Mining Subcommittee. Sub-committee. He held the first in Denver Nov. 10, just five days before most of the Bunker Hill mining complex, including in-cluding a lead-zinc smelter, started to close down near Kellogg, Idaho, idling some 2100 workers. ) This big cutback occurred less than two years after the Anaconda Co. closed its copper smelter in Anaconda, Mont., and its copper refinery in Great Falls, Mont. Anaconda now ships its copper to Japan for smelting and refining and imports it in shapes and forms for manufacture into completed products. It's cheaper. Five other copper smelters are likely to close, industry sources told the Denver hearing on Nov. 10, if the smelting industry does not get some relief from the Clean Air Act, now up for amendment and renewal in Congress. They include, according to Tthe testimony. ASARCO's copper ' smelter at Tacoma, Wash., Kennecott's copper smelter at McGill, New, the Inspiration smelter at Miami, Ariz., x,and the Phelps Dodge smelters at Douglas and Ajo, Ariz. t! As the nation now has only 15 copper ri smelters in operation, if these five e joined those already closed, "the nation ers would lose 38 percent of its domestic f .copper smelting capacity," Rovert i Malone, director of environmental affairs for Kennecott Minerals headquartered in Salt Lake City told v the mining panel in a period of less e'jthan five years. !r EXTENSION OF TIME Santini is using this set of hearings to a wild a case for extending the Santini 'ySmendment or a similar amendment to -l -he Clean Air Act now under review in he House Energy and Commerce ; is Committee, of which he is a member. K Witnesses focused on the industry's difficulty to meet emission control standards for continuous control of sulfur dioxide by 1988, as provided under the 1977 Clean Air Act. They want more flexibility in meeting the Clean Air Act standards, including the right to curtail operations and obtain delayed compliance orders. Santini's amendment in the 1977 act in effect postponed compliance with the Clean Air Act for smelters then in operation for 10 years. Under Section 119 of the 1977 Act, primary nonferrous smelters operating at the time of enactment could be given two delayed compliance orders, the first until Jan. 1,1983, and the second until Jan. 1, 1988. (P L. 95-95) Richard D. Wilson, who appeared before the Subcommittee to try to assure the industry that the Reagan Administration would be alert if not sympathetic to the smelting industry's problems, indicated his agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is already working with smelters on a case-by-case basis. EXPORT ORE, IMPORT REFINED METAL The other problem that the hearing zeroed in on was what the domestic mining industry regards as unfair competition from abroad. David Swan, vice president for environmental issues for Kennecott Corp., noted that foreign governments make policies "quite favorable to domestic non-ferrous industry" within their national borders. These include tariffs on refined metal, favorable tax treatment, fewer environmental and health and safety standards, even subsidies. Swan said. Although Japan has strict environmental en-vironmental requirements, it aids its smelting industry by providing it with greater tax benefits, protective tariffs and low-interest loans, he told the mining panel. Emil Romagnoli, manager of regulatory affairs for ASARCO, said competition from copper, lead and zinc smelters in Japan, West Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Spain, with Brazil coming on strong, is fierce. The Japanese government's policies "directly and indirectly subsidize Japan's custom copper smelting and refining industry," the ASARCO official of-ficial said, by allow ing their smelters to bid up the price of feedstocks, to offer attractive prices for their services, and afford protection against competition through a protective tariff on refined copper. "There is an increasing trend to concentrate exports from domestic mines to Japanese smelters, raising serious minerals policy issues," Romagnoli testified. Swan pointed out when a copper, lead or zinc smelter closes, the loss is more than the smelter's capacity to take the impurities out of these base metals and later refine them. For example, he said, "copper processing also provides for the country's entire primary production of arsenic, rhenium, selenium, tellurium, platinum, and palladium, as well as about one third of the nation's supply of gold and silver." . In the loss of a copper smelter, "we also lose a lot of other materials which, while they are produced in small quantities, are in many instances vital to our industrial and military needs. For instance selenium is used in xerography," Swan testified. Xerography is a process for reproducing materials of vital importance im-portance to our commerce and industry. The number of copper, lead and zinc smelters has decreased from several dozen to about 25 today, according to the testimony presented to the Santini panel. Industry witnesses said loss in capacity since 1965 was 32 percent in lead smelting, 15 percent in zinc smelting and 12 percent in copper smelting. But figures from the Bureau of Mines given to Western Resources Wrap-up (WRW) on Jan. 13 indicate there has been a loss of one-third of the capacity in zinc smelting alone between 1975-81, with sizeable losses also in copper and lead smelting capacity. "At the present rate of decline, the U.S. minerals processing industry does not have long to live," Santini said at the Denver hearing. "What is a continual con-tinual and ongoing source of frustration to me is that the citizens of this country don't know or give a damn. And in that circumstance, the governmental apparatus, ap-paratus, legislative or executive, is not responsive," to complex problems of the industry, let alone to the national security problems posed by such a loss, Santini stated. In addition to the above reasons for the decline, the low price of base metals lowered quality ore aging plant, poor market prospects, high costs of labor and electricity were given at the Denver hearing as reasons for smelter shutdowns and cutbacks. |