|
The Trail Smelter dispute was a trans-boundary pollution case involving the federal governments of both Canada and the United States, which eventually contributed to establishing the No Harm principle in the environmental law of transboundary pollution. The smelter in Trail, British Columbia is operated by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (COMINCO) and has processed lead and zinc since 1896. Smoke from the smelter caused damage to forests and crops in the surrounding area and also across the Canada–US border in Washington. The smoke from the smelter distressed residents, resulting in complaints to COMINCO and demands for compensation. The dispute between the smelter operators and affected landowners could not be resolved, resulting in the case being sent to an arbitration tribunal. Negotiation and resulting litigation and arbitration was settled in 1941. ==Historical context== The Trail Smelter is located in Trail, British Columbia in the south-eastern corner of the Kootenays, which is known as a mineral-rich area. The smelter was initially built by American mining engineer and magnate F. Augustus Heinze in 1895 to treat lead and zinc ore materials from nearby mines.〔Elsie G.Turnbull, ''Trail Between Two Wars: The Story of a Smelter City''. (Victoria: Morriss Printing, 1980).〕 Prior to building the smelter, agents for Heinze signed a contract guaranteeing 75,000 tons of ore would be provided by Rossland's LeRoi Mining Company.〔 The smelter and the freight railway to the Rossland mines were bought by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) for $1,000,000 in 1898, when tracks were being laid into the town and during the construction of a competing smelter in nearby Northport, Washington State.〔 The Trail Smelter became a factor in the Canadian government's efforts to establish a smelting industry in Canada, which had sent ores to American smelters for processing in the past.〔 The Trail Smelter operation grew, adding other local mines to the portfolio, and were incorporated as the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada (COMINCO) in 1905, with continuing support from the CPR. When completed in 1895, the smelter could process 250 tons of ore daily and had smoke stacks 150 feet high to help disperse the fumes.〔 During the arbitration that followed the dispute, the Tribunal commented that by 1906 Trail had 'one of the best and largest equipped smelting plants on this continent.'" By 1916 the Trail Smelter was producing monthly outputs of 4,700 tons of sulphur, but with post World War I expansion and technological improvements to the smelting process, the company doubled the smelter's output throughout the 1920s and was producing 10,000 tons monthly by 1930.〔 Most of Trail's male residents worked for the smelter and local businesses and farmers relied on the income from smelter employee salaries. Smoke from the smelter was seen by many residents as a sign of prosperity and continued employment; local residents commented that the "thicker the smoke ascending from Smelter Hill the greater Trail's prosperity."〔James R Allum. ""An Outcrop of Hell": History, Environment, and the Politics of the ''Trail Smelter'' Dispute,"'Transboundary Harm in International Law: Lessons from the ''Trail Smelter''Arbitration,' Bratspies, Rebecca M. and Russell A. Miller eds. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2006),14.〕 On the other hand, local farmers complained about the effects of the toxic smoke on their crops, which eventually led to arbitration with COMINCO between 1917 and 1924, and resulted to the assessment $600,000 in fines being levied against the defendant. The fines were to serve as compensation for smoke damage to crops and included COMINCO buying four complete farms (out of sixty farms involved) closest to the stacks.〔〔Allum〕 No government regulations of the smelter's output were imposed on COMINCO following the 1924 decision.〔Allum〕 As a direct consequence of the local dispute and arbitration, COMINCO looked for ways to reduce the smelter's smoke output while increasing the smelter's production.〔Smelter Smoke〕 The initial solution involved increasing the height of the smoke stacks to 409 feet in 1926 in an effort to disperse the smelter's smoke by pushing it higher into the atmosphere, but this local solution proved to be a problem for their Washington neighbours.〔Allum〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Trail Smelter dispute」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|