Trail is home to the
Teck Cominco smelter, one of the largest
lead smelters and
zinc smelters in the world, and is the largest employer in Trail, providing 1,400 jobs in the town of 7800. The
smelter has been in operation for over a hundred years and has provided many well-paying jobs that do not require more than a high school education. Intergenerational families worked at the smelter and Teck Cominco became Trail's "economic and cultural centre." Presentations include exhibits of sophisticated
environmental monitoring systems installed in the Trail area by Teck. In February 1896,
Fritz Augustus Heinze opened his British Columbia Smelting and Refining Company smelter at Trail to process ore brought from
Rossland on his
Columbia and Western Railway. The concentrate from the smelter was transported to
Butte, Montana, for refining. The plant capacity was soon increased from about 150 to 400 tons per day. However, with the supply of Rossland ore largely going south to
Northport, the plant was unprofitable. The output was 50 per cent pure copper at best, and the yellow clouds of
sulfur dioxide became health hazards for the region. When the
Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) expressed interest in buying the Columbia and Western Railway (C&W), Heinze insisted the package include the Trail smelter. In February 1898, CP bought the C&W for $600,000, and the smelter for $200,000. Heinze retained several other holdings. CP created the Canadian Smelting Works to run the plant. CP's new
Crowsnest Pass branch supplied cheap coal, and the new
Bonnington Falls dam provided electricity. That August, new
blast furnaces increased efficiency and tall chimneys lifted the toxic smoke farther above Trail. Since lead was the most common ore in the region, the company built two
lead furnaces, which were operational by the end of 1901. The next year, the federal government offered a subsidy of five dollars for each ton of lead smelted in Canada. However, the concentrate still required refining at the
American Smelting and Refining Company's plant in
Tacoma, Washington. To address this problem, by the end of 1902, Trail opened the first commercial
electrolytic refining process in the world, producing pure lead, pure
copper, fine silver and gold. In 1906, the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada (CM&S), a consortium comprising the smelter and certain Red Mountain mines at Rossland, was formed. CP had a 54 per cent holding. After the Northport smelter closed in 1921, Trail remained the sole operator in the region. By 1925, the plant employed 2,100 men and comprised a lead plant, an electrolytic
zinc plant, a copper smelter, a copper refinery, a silver and gold refinery, plants for making
bluestone (Copper(II) sulfate),
hydrofluosilicic acid and
sulfuric acid, a foundry, a machine shop and round-house, and a copper rod mill. That year, CM&S processed 380,000 tons of ores and concentrates at Trail to recover 21,352 ounces of gold, nearly 4.5 million ounces of silver, 9,500 tons of copper, 117,500 tons of lead and almost 50,000 tons of zinc.
Trail smelter arbitration (1938–1942) By the end of
World War I, the smoke pollution had devastated the surrounding district. During the following decades, this triggered the
Trail Smelter dispute, which resulted in decades of legal action. This case, known commonly as the "Trail smelter arbitration", is a landmark in environmental law, as it helped to establish the "polluter pays" principle for transnational pollution issues. In 1966, the company name changed to
Cominco. Over the following decades, the smelter spent millions on pollution control. The monitored lead levels in the blood of local school children fell from high that year to insignificant 30 years later.
Teck provides funding for this ongoing operation. Because of improvements in smelting processes and emissions controls over the years, the existing contamination is attributed to smelting activities that pre-date the 1997 adoption of newer technologies.
Pakootas v. Teck Cominco Metals The
Trail lead and zinc smelter is located north of the United States-Canadian border. Over the decades it has discharged approximately 10 million to 20 million tons of smelting byproduct containing
lead,
arsenic and
mercury into the Columbia River and
Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake in
Washington. In 2004, a
citizen lawsuit was filed under the 1980
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) against Teck Cominco—, now
Teck Resources In 2018, the Supreme Court rejected Teck's appeal and found in favour of the litigants. ==Manhattan Project==