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The EPA has rejected an $11 million offer by Union Pacific Railroad to settle its liability over the extensive lead contamination on the city's east side.
Instead, the Environmental Protection Agency is pushing the railroad to assume full liability for the cleanup, which could total more than $70 million.
Associated Press wrote:Union Pacific and the Environmental Protection Agency are ending their decade-long dispute over lead contamination in Omaha with a settlement that reduces the railroad’s share of the cost to $25 million instead of the more than $200 million originally sought.
UP and the EPA disagreed about the contamination’s source. The EPA blamed industrial sources of lead and Union Pacific argued lead house paint is the real problem.
Union Pacific maintained it shouldn’t be held responsible for the lead contamination, because it only leased property to a smelting company, Asarco, and that ended in 1946 when Asarco bought the land and continued operating a smelter there until its closure in 1997.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS wrote:Asarco is accusing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of lying in federal court and concealing records that may clear the mining company from responsibility for lead contamination found on nearly 6,000 Omaha properties. The company filed a federal lawsuit against the EPA on Friday, saying the agency committed fraud against the court, because of information that emerged about the source of the lead contamination.
New records the agency released in response to a Union Pacific freedom of information lawsuit filed about a year ago suggest that lead paint on houses, not Asarco's former lead smelter in Omaha, may have caused the contamination. Asarco lawyer Gregory Evans says EPA officials swore they didn't have those records related to lead paint contamination. “It's stunning what the government did here to further its enforcement action against Asarco,” Evans said
