[Barry C. Roach]

I know this has been discussed here but I received it and am passing it on.

This is from a sales rep that calls on the DOE RUN smelter and mines in Mo.

Herculaneum Primary Smelter Shutting down 12-31-13-----------only the refinery will stay open----A large portion of the lead concentrate from the mines / mills has been shipping to China and will continue to do so after Herculaneum shuts down.

Costly EPA standards forced Doe Run to make a business decision and just shut it down.

 

[Claybird2]

If they can't take our guns..........they'll come after our ammo.......SOB's !!!!

 

[Bob Hawkes]

What you are saying Barry is that they will still be taking lead from reclamation projects?? I know that's where our lead went thru Gipson-Ricketts who did our club. Good people to deal with that left a membership very happy with the outcome. A Healthy, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

 

[birdogs]

Many years ago, I had a customer in NYC named the St. Joseph's Lead Co. What happened to them?

 

[Hap MecTweaks]

Bob Hawks, I'm sure all clubs that are being mined for "used" lead enjoy the profit gleaned for a pittance. I know our club does also.

Refining that lead to make it pure again? Leaves me to wonder what percentage goes back to the shooting sports as opposed to the amount shipped out of the country?

I'd think lead used for our shooting sports should be recycled back and reused again for that purpose? Claybird2 is spot on!

HAP

 

[wolfram]

I'm not sure how it is that non compliance with environmental protection regulations equates to a conspiracy to keep you from obtaining shot or bullets. Would any of you care to live downwind of a HM smelter? How can your recreational pursuits justify a corporation's long and well documented history of dumping tons of highly toxic materials into the air shed of our heartland?

Yes, I know many of you believe that lead has no toxic properties because you have handled elemental and alloyed lead all your life and didn't have no problem. Unfortunately that is not what we are exposed to with smelter gases. There really is a problem and many people have had their lives destroyed by it. Do just a bit of research on this and you won't feel the same way about the closing of the Doe Run smelter in Herculaneum.

 

[Zoom.Golly]

Lead concentrate going to China? China is the worlds biggest importer of what I call lead ore but may be more properly called lead concentrate. If someone cares to educate me on the differences between lead ore and lead concentrate I'd be interested in learning.

China is also the largest exporter of finished lead, or whatever it is properly called. That is a filthy business and may be an industry better suited to China than the United States.

There is big demand in China and more so in India for batteries. Battery run vehicles, essentially golf carts, are a growth business in both countries for intra-village and intra-town transportation.

What seems odd is that lead recovery from batteries hardly exist in either county. USA recycles a very high percentage of batteries, much higher than China or India. But battery recycling is a dirty, odious process with a lot of manual labor. It seems an industry that would be made for economies like those in India or China.

Unfortunately a lot of shot is not recycled in US. In some case it's the geography and topography of the club. And lead on skeet fields and sporting courses is usually too scattered to make economic recovery viable.

Also, a lot of lead comes as a side product of other mining operations, e.g. silver and copper.

 

[wolfram]

Bull Roger,the EPA has been trying to get the Doe Run smelter into compliance for several decades - way before Obama. The company was given a timeline for compliance and they let it run out as opposed to making the necessary investments to bring their operation into compliance.

And no the people that have been sickened and killed by this operation didn't know the actual risks and they were actually lead to believe otherwise. Do some research before you show your ignorance further.

For what its worth, I have a full career in the metal processing industry and I have delt with regulatory compliance issues from both design and operational positions. I do know a few things about this.

 

[Brady509]

The miner at our club has a contract with ATK. Now whether or not they are shipping it over seas' I haven't a clue.

Brady

 

[timb99]

You don't hear much any more about acid rain any more, do you.

That's because the EPA put limits on power plant stack emissions, and catalytic converters on cars.

Sometimes they are the devil, but sometimes they're on the right track.

 

[dedpair]

http://sierrabullets.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/sierra-responds-how-will-the-closure-of-the-lead-smelting-plant-affect-sierra-bullets/

 

[likes-to-shoot]

Easier to get to..

 

[Hap MecTweaks]

Like all things good and fun, if money isn't a problem, there is no problem.

HAP

 

[joe kuhn]

Makes me want to go back to flint.

 

[wolfram]

Sure Roger I guess I am a Greenie if that means I am opposed to polluting our environment to the point where people and animals are getting sick and dying. I am also equiped with the technical skills to prevent that sort of thing from happening while at the same time allowing my company to continue operating and producing metal products that have value and are profitable on the the global market. But gee I wouldn't want to do that because it might make me a 'greenie'. Whats next, maybe I am a closet Democrat that secretly pushes the big O agenda.

So are you telling us that you think it is okay to poison a town and ruin a bunch of young lives because hey its lead and we got a god given right to cheap lead. Or is it all okay because the victims probably knew the risk and chose to live there because thats where the job was? Please tell us why you think the smelter at Herculaneum should continue operating and profitting from turning a town in our heartland into a toxic wasteland.

 

[Reuben Sandwich]

At first I thought Roger was a little crazy. But now I suspect it's the result of years of exposure working in the toxic metals industry.

Bottom line is that somebody at Doe Run had to run the numbers and figured it was cheaper in the short and long run to close Herculaneum than do improvements. That's probably figuring in cleaning up the now superfund site.

 

[michmoe]

I'm curious wolfram how you know so much about the Doe Run site, do you live near it?

 

[Barry C. Roach]

There is no question that the town of Herculaneum, MO lives with more lead dust than other towns. But to throw away a very necessary product and an industry, without subsidizing its existence and continued improvement toward health matters, like the crazy money that current administration is throwing at solar, curly (mercury laden) light bulbs and GE wind generators (made in China), is folly.

In the case of the current administration their CHANGE is nothing more than poising themselves at the ground floor of third class producing industries emerging to redistribute the revenues from the established industries to less successful and incompetent alternate industries, ie. Solyndra and others.

It's costing the taxpayers and consumers trillions of dollars annually with most being funneled back to D.C. and the middle class continues to bleed further. Why the hell should you be surprised that we are getting fed up with the EPA. Between the EPA and the IRS ... we, the people, are screwed.

What I think is ... that if the EPA would be used as more a true regulatory agency with powers only great enough to authorize but not allocate, monies to help American industy and less an instrument of punishment toward American industry American industry would thrive again. When there is that much power given any government agency ... everybody loses.

We're mad because government is only thinking of furthering more government. It's really very pitiful. Give us a break.

 

[michmoe]

Praise the Lord, the government is going to save us all from ourselves! And to think of the many brave soldiers that died so we could have "Freedom"!!

 

[wolfram]

Michmoe - what I know about Doe Run and Herculaneum I came by through research while I was in the gold industry. One of my assignments was resolve the problem of our fire assay crew getting elevated lead levels - sometimes to the point where they had to be removed from their job. The method of fire assay they were using at the time involved the use of litharge (PbO) as a collector in a high temperature fusion. So my research included the Doe Run smelter and the massive problems they were having. Eventually I was able to nearly eliminate the lead oxide exposure problem for the fire assayers by supplying makeup air near the furnaces which was then exhausted to a dry cyclone followed by a baghouse. That cost big bucks and on the scale of things it is a extremely small air handling system. We then applied similar technology to our larger Dore' production furnaces. The recovered metal values from the furnace exhaust paid for that system in a matter of months.

The EPA did not require us to do any of those things but we had an obligation to protect or work force and their families from getting poisoned by our processes. All of that doesn't make us bleeding heart liberal greenies but just the opposite it was just good business practices and the right thing to do.