Oil company Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO) has to pay damages worth $6.75 million in a settlement for natural resource damages to federal, state and tribal governments. The activities of the company owned by BP Plc., caused pollution in north Idaho’s Silver Valley.
Wendy Olson a US Attorney said that the company had paid $5 million in a settlement for releasing hazardous substances into the environment from its Bunker Hill Superfund site in northern Idaho.
The mining and smelting operations caused heavy metal pollution in the area causing the historic mining area to be declared a Superfund site in 1983. EPA documents claim that residents near the Bunker Hill complex got exposed to high levels of lead that can cause developmental abnormalities and can adversely affect the nervous system.
Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), a United States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances.
The federal government sued the company in 1990 for the contamination along the Coeur d’Alene River. About $ 1.7 million was paid by Atlantic Richfield Co to the U.S. Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and Idaho government for damages to natural resources in the area.
A BP spokesperson Daren Beaudo said on Monday that the company was pleased to have reached this settlement agreement with the federal, state and tribal governments in an emailed statement.