The Asarco bankruptcy court yesterday "approved a $1.1 billion environmental settlement between the mining firm and federal and state agencies," according to a story in the Arizona Republic. This will resolve $6.8 billion in claims and sets the stage for resolution of the competing bids to take over the company.
The paper reports that "Asarco will pay $30 million to clean up three sites in Arizona: the Sacaton open-pit copper-mine site near Casa Grande [right, credit GoogleEarth] in Pinal County and the Salero and Trench mine sites near Patagonia in Santa Cruz County."