El Paso's Asarco smokestacks gone in 35 seconds

[TexasTowelie]

Photo: Rudy Gutierrez/El Paso Times

It took about 35 seconds for two of El Paso's more visible and sometimes controversial pieces of history to fall to the ground and disintegrate just after the sun rose on a clear, almost windless Saturday morning.

One cannon-like, reverberating boom was followed several seconds later by another reverberating boom.

Those were the sounds produced after about 300 pounds of explosives were detonated inside the bases of two huge concrete smokestacks. They slowly fell like giant trees onto cushioned dirt beds on the former 126-year-old Asarco copper smelter site in West-Central El Paso. Three unexpected paragliders hovered in the sky above Juárez to get a bird's-eye of the planned destruction.

At 6:55 a.m., the smokestacks were gone.

More at http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_23015235/el-pasos-asarco-smokestacks-demolished .

[defacto7]

1. Very cool! Mr. 3000 posts.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Hell yeah!

Bringing you Texas news no matter how crappy it really is!

FWIW, I've received several comments praising my coverage of the stories here in Texas. Some of it has been serious while at other times I'll post a puff-piece for laughs. There were a few times when readers took action because it affected their personal finances.

However, my main reasons for being such a prolific blogger is that there are stories throughout the state that affect Democrats that aren't covered on a statewide basis. If I can provide some exposure to those issues and keep people interested so that they get out to vote in 2014 so we don't fall into the same trap as 2010, then it is worth it. After all, we can never have enough catnip jokes on DU!



Thanks for observing that I made it to 3,000 posts.

[NoPasaran]

3. Boom goes the dynamite

As a former El Pasoan, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the stacks were west side landmaeks. On the other hand, Asarco did a great job of poisoning the area for decades.

During the 1920s ASARCO was the largest mining operator in Mexico, with twenty-four different units. In 1948 slag fuming facilitators were built for the recovery of zinc from the slag produced by the lead furnaces, and in 1951 ASARCO built a 612-foot smokestack to reduce ground-level concentrations of sulfur dioxide. In 1967 the company built an 828-foot stack, designed to help alleviate local air pollution. In 1969, however, El Paso still had a higher concentration of lead in the air than any other city in Texas.

In the spring of 1970, the city of El Paso filed a $1 million suit, later joined by the State of Texas, charging ASARCO with violations of the Texas Clean Air Act. In December 1971 the El Paso City-County Health Department reported that the smelter had emitted 1,012 metric tons of lead between 1969 and 1971 and found that the smelter was the principal source of particulate lead within a radius of a mile. When lead was discovered in the soil of Smeltertown, the company removed the top foot and a half of soil and replaced it with fresh soil. When lead poisoning was suspected in the children living in Smeltertown, the company bought the land in Smeltertown and removed the residents. Following a 1975 injunction requiring ASARCO to spend $120 million on modernization and environmental improvements, the company by 1978 had reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide by nearly two-thirds from pre-1970 levels.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dka02