The ASARCO Legacy
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- Опубликовано: 1 фев 2025
- It was one of the largest smelting operations on the West Coast that led to one of the largest ecological cleanups in Puget Sound. Today we can examine the legacy and devastation of the ASARCO plant with a keen eye.
Join us for this special Earth Day virtual tour of the ASARCO Legacy and the role we play in tending to our waters.
This is a FREE Virtual Program brought to you by the Foss Waterway Seaport's FREE VIRTUAL THURSDAY program. You can watch live on RUclips or Facebook on April 21st at 8pm.
Thank you for this informative video. I moved to Tacoma in 1982, the transformation I have witnessed has been absolutely amazing!
Loved the video and would love the deeper dive into everything ASARCO that you teased. Thank you for all your hard work!
Watching for the second time and forgot I had already voted for more "fun" with ASARCO, so consider this my second vote 😊
spent my first 5 years on this earth in the neighborhood across the street north from vassault park with the stack in full view from the backyard. one of my earliest memories was of the bloc party that the neighborhood put on to watch the stack come down. it was a big event.
I absolutely can’t stop watching your videos. I woke up at about 5am and I’m still here lol.
I moved from minnesota 4 months ago. Knew nothing of Washington, except for your videos. Imost oeople think i have lived here always. Love your videos. G I ing to take tour
Amazing ..and chilling. I grew up all my childhood right there. 😮
I did too in the town of Ruston.
When I first arrived here in 1979 the entire log yard at the tide flats for Wearhouser Lumber (sp) wash sitting on hundreds of acres of Asarco Slag. This all had 24/7 round the clock sprinkler irrigation wetting all the stacks. The slag was easy free fill dirt used everywhere in Tacoma and elsewhere. In fact, I came here to work as a sandblaster during the painting of the 11th Street Puyallup River Bridge as well as the Carbonado Bridge and many others throughout Western Washington... Our sandblast grit was always black slag from ASARCO
Wow, thank you for all the research you put into this story. Awesome channel. Speaking of legacies, can you do a story on the freeway project by the dome. Maybe when its finished 50yrs from now it will make for a good laugh.
Ha, that’s brilliant!
Thank you for another Great video. Be Safe
Stay Happy an Strong
Very bitter sweet, yes very interesting and a safety message for people not falmilar with the history!
Kiser aluminum plant shut down as well....
True enough. The whole port has changed pretty dramatically
I attended Fife school from kindergarten through high school. Every year the high school track would get a fresh grading of Asarco slag because it was free to all schools in the area. We ran on that track in PE all the time.
I lived in North Tacoma, near what was then Truman Jr. High School. 1969-1980, from when I was 8 years old to 19. My dad, my brother and I would be working in the yard and we would see a yellow cloud come rolling up the hill from the Smelter. Actually, we would taste or"feel" it in our mouths and throats before we could see it. Anybody who has experienced this will know what I'm talking about. We would drop what we were doing and head into the house, shut the doors and windows and wait it out. My brother and I were tested in the 70s for possible pollution and, sure enough, we were found to have elevated levels of lead and arsenic in our systems. I left Tacoma in 1981. My parents stayed. My Dad was diagnosed with Leukemia in the mid-90s, underwent treatment and eventually died of the side-effects of the treatment some 10 years later. I've always questioned an eventual correlation/cause between his disease and the Smelter. There was no history of Leukemia on his side of the family. I fear we are just a few of many who were affected by the Smelter so, nothing special, here. I just wanted to bear witness and confirm that, yes, the Smelter did have an impact on the neighbouring communities.
Me, my hubby, brother and sister-in-law were there when the Asarco tower went down. We got a little to close and took a direct hit with all the debris. It was scary as there was so much of it. We were all worried about the effects it would have. We covered up but still what a mess.
I grew up on 46th and Pearl. Watched that thing go down from my roof. The guys that showed up in white suits to rip up the yards were terrifying.
I would love a deeper-dive as well. Is there any information on people getting sick in the area & passing away from the aftermath?
Great video & I'm surprised there aren't hundreds of comments here as it's a fascinating piece of history.
I remember driving through Tacoma on I-5 with my parents when I was a kid & the stench from the smelter. Yuck!
Asarco was all over the news on TV, newspapers & magazines back then.
Thanks for the video!
I also would love a deeper dive. For instance, we’re all so happy and the area provides entertainment and farmers markets, but now, who is making all of our copper? We’ve “slagged” all our heavy industry elsewhere. And where is the accountability/responsibility for the health problems? Just curious…
As a child, my dad saw ASARCO dumping the hot slag into the bay which created the jetty that is now a park. As the slag dumped into the bay, large plombs of steam would go into the air. He said it looked like the photos you see of a volcano spilling into the ocean.
We received the settlement money from the class action lawsuit sometime in the mid 90s. Our home is within the scribed line distance from the smokestack.... By just about 25 feet on N 31st and Warner. Have not had and soil remediation
Dad always wondered about the folly of creating a city park on what was really a jetty made of arsenic and lead. Too bad he did not live to see Dune park.
I remember being down there when they blew the stack. I was 12. My Mom, Dad and twin bro and I went down to all the festivities going on that day. I was actually worried about not having a mask on with all that stuff still in the stack.
It's such a wild page of history.
Our vegetables and fruits grown didn't hurt us and flowers were not affected.
The town of Ruston did get some of the money from selling to whoever bought it and named it Ruston point, my dad was on the town council of Ruston when this happened in 2005.
I lived there at the time when they took the smokestack down and would not go to see it I watched it on TV
My ex-husbands Grandfather job was maintenance on the stack. Years later I worked for William Dickson and we hauled the contaminated soil off property of home's owners.
My grandfather retired from the smelter.
Had one great uncle that was like #2 in charge until it closed and another that was head of security...........ill never step foot in that new area they got down there....
All the kids that grew up in Ruston for their whole childhood never ended up with any type of illnesses from the assarco plant.
We had a whole new lawn put in because our yard tested positive for arsenic, we didn't have to pay for it.
Something dad said about the clean of the area was, "They are telling us how they are fixing this but... plastic does not last for thousands of years. That arsenic is there, deep in the ground. It IS the ground. The ground is literally made up of piles of poisonous earth. Yet, they put a little plastic and soil over the ground and say it is cleaned up. No it is smoke and mirrors and will come back to haunt Tacoma in the future." He told me to leave the area and never return.
My mom and her 8 siblings didn't ,i was a third generation raised in Ruston none of us were ever affected by it.
Your facts are incorrect. One of my close friends worked there 28 years. I hope you interviewed the actual employees instead of assuming the worst. He is still alive at 84 years old and is willing to interview.
I did speak to a few former employees and family’s of former employees as well as reference EPA, local city, and municipal worker documents. If you find any discrepancies I would be happy to run a correction.
@@PrettyGrittyTours thank you and I will respond soon, no offense intended.
Dad left the state for the implosion of the ASARCO stack so that the cloud would not wash over him
One doesnt know any different when one grows up with it ! Those that grew up with it would be in their 6os.
I grew up in Ruston from 65 to 1980,we were tested for arsenic and asbestos over the years.
Makes a person wonder how many people died of cancer from Asarco stack?????????
cherries need arsenic to grow
O3.