Published: July 15, 2016 |

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A proposed settlement for environmental damages has been announced between Nadist LLC and the state. The agreement would designate $850,000 to address impacts from the company’s Sweetwater Mine and Mill in Reynolds County.

Of that sum, $45,000 would be allotted to cover the state’s environmental assessment costs, while the balance of $805,000 would be devoted to restoration of the surrounding area. The proposed measure is entering a period of public comment through the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) until Aug. 10.

The Sweetwater Mine and Mill has been in operation since at least the 1960s. Since at least 1998, Doe Run Company has owned and operated the mine, according to court records.

Nadist, a timber company controlled by Leo Drey, a prominent conservationist who died in 2015, leased mining rights to Doe Run and the previous mine owners.

In 2006, Nadist filed a lawsuit in federal court in St. Louis claiming that Doe Run contaminated Nadist land near a lead mine in southern Missouri with toxic metals. In 2012, the lawsuit was concluded and the company, Drey, and his wife, anti-nuclear activist Kay Drey, approached the state and the federal government to resolve outstanding environmental claims, according to court records.

On July 5, DNR sued Nadist and related parties in U.S. District Court in St. Louis; the proposed consent decree was filed the same day.

If approved, the settlement will become the latest in a long line of cleanup payments from southeast Missouri’s once-prolific lead mining industry.

Though the mines provided jobs and helped coin the area’s Lead Belt nickname, the region is now left to deal with lead mining’s toxic — and costly — legacy. The area’s mines have reached approximately $50 million in settlements with the state and federal government since 2009.

The state has made recent efforts to devote revenue from the settlements toward the acquisition of land for new state parks in the region. Some local elected officials, however, have argued that the money would be better spent on restoration in affected communities, even though they worry it may not be enough to rehabilitate a landscape that supported generations of mining activity.

“Now, with the pot dwindling, the hopes of the impacted area actually being restored and remediated seem to be slipping away,” Rep. Linda Black, R-Desloge, previously told the Post-Dispatch.

Source: (July 13, 2016) St. Louis Dispatch

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