Document 4v35XxjNXbRGZB53pQzwoEQra

JEFFREY L. ZELMS THE DOE RUN COMPANY SUITE 400 1 1885 LACKLAND ROAD ST LOUIS. MO 63146-4236 TELEX 98-8554 FAX 314-991-7180 January 3r 1990 ECE ;vp0 JAN 4 jggg R L- 6IJYETT Mr. William A. Humphrey, Chairman The Doe Run Company Partnership Committee c/o Homestake Mining Company 650 California Street San Francisco, CA 94108 Dear Bill: I THOUGHT THE ATTACHED ARTICLE FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO WARRANT SENDING IT TO YOU. In THE LEAD BUSINESS THIS ARTICLE IS VIEWED AS BOTH GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS. ON THE PRIMARY SIDE OF THE BUSINESS, IT IS BAD NEWS AS IT IS DESIGNED TO REDUCE OUR ABILITY TO SUPPLY LEAD METAL FROM VIRGIN SOURCES, I.E. OUR MINES. ON THE SECONDARY SIDE OF THE INDUSTRY, IT IS GOOD NEWS BECAUSE IT FORCES THE USE OF LEAD METAL FROM RECYCLED FEEDS. AS I THINK YOU KNOW, I SERVE AS CHAIRMAN OF THE LEAD INDUSTRY Association, the dominant trade association of the lead INDUSTRY. The ASSOCIATION HAS APPROXIMATELY 50 MEMBERS FROM ALL MARKET SEGMENTS OF THE LEAD BUSINESS. THE LIA HAS ALSO BECOME AWARE THAT THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND, IN CONJUNCTION WITH SENATOR JOHN H. CHAFEE (R) OF RHODE ISLAND IS GOING TO INTRODUCE A BILL TO THIS LEGISLATIVE SESSION THAT WILL PARALLEL THE INITIATIVE PROPOSED BY THE WHITE HOUSE. As the Chairman of LIA, I will be called upon to speak to the ISSUE AND WILL INDORSE THE BENEFITS OF RECYCLING LEAD. 1 WILL ALSO STATE THE POSITIVES OF LEAD AND THE ABSENCE OF A LEGITIMATE REASON TO BAN OR TAX PRIMARY PRODUCTION. One FINAL OBSERVATION IS THAT IT APPEARS MORE AND MORE THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO MAKE THE PRIMARY LEAD BUSINESS MORE DIFFICULT AND SIMULTANEOUSLY INDORSE AND SUPPORT THE RECYCLING SIDE. FLUOR - 06563 Mr. William A. Humphrey January 3, 1990 Page 2 I WOULD APPRECIATE ANY COMMENTS THAT YOU FEEL ARE APPROPRIATE. JLZ/llm Enclosure cc: Paul W. Allen David K. Fagin Lee A. Graber Robert L. Guyett Les G. McCraw THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3._1990 __/t3 Campbell Picks White House Hopes to Spur Recycling Gerber's Chief With Hew Taxes on Certain Materials For Top Post & By David Wessel and Rose Gutfeld anything but taxes, administration officials Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal said the recycling fee is intended more to Embattled Soup Maker Said WASHINGTON-The Bush administra tion, hoping to encourage greater use of re cycled materials by American industry, is planning to propose taxes on paper, glass, bolster Mr. Bush's standing as "the envi ronmental president" than to raise reve nue. EPA Goal of 25% Cut To Tap David Johnson, Ending a Long Search . By Alix M. Freedman And Vindu P. Goel Staff Reporters of The Waul Street Journal " David W. Johnson, chairman and chief . executive officer of Gerber Products Co., has been appointed chief executive of em . battled Campbell Soup Co., people familiar .. with the situation said. , The choice of Mr. Johnson, a marketing whiz and turnaround expert who is ex tremely popular o-jvith Wall Street, culminates a tumul' tuous succession ^ search that lasted J more than a year. " pampbell began - looking for a new '! chief executive even before the resigna1 tion of R. Gordon * McGovern, who left > in November under pressure from cer" tain members of the Dnvjd W. Johnson ; ' board and Camp- ------------------------; bell's controlling Dorrance family. 7 The move to bring in a chief executive from the outside-a departure from tradi tion ' at the Camden, N.J., soup : maker-represents an attempt by Camp- bell's board to quell mounting infighting and takeover rumors that have been swirl- .ring around the company in recent months. plastic and metais that are made from vir gin materials, administration officials said. Although details aren't firm, officials said the plan is to levy a per-ton tax on various materials at the point of produc tion. Bottlers, newspaper publishers and others who use recycled materials would then get a rebate or otherwise be ex empted, in part, from the fee. The initiative is partly designed to ful fill President Bush's campaign promise to "make a national commitment to reduce waste by recycling and developing technol ogies that produce less waste." The plan also reflects the administration's predispo sition to use economic incentives,, rather than new regulations, to address social problems, particularly in the environ ment. Changing Incentives If approved by Congress, the taxes would change incentives, one administra tion official said. By making products made from virgin materials more costly, the government would give business an ob vious incentive to use more recycled mate rials. The more recycling, the less garbage to be disposed of. Details of the proposal are expected to be included in President Bush's fiscal 1991 budget. The White House budget office confirmed that the budget will be unveiled Jan. 29, a week later than scheduled. Mr. Bush is expected to deliver his State of the Union address the same week. . The administration plan apparently bears some resemblance to a concept cir culated by Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta. A Coca-Cola spokesman confirmed that the The Environmental Protection Agency has a public goal of reducing the nation's waste by 25% by 1992, a goal that Presi dent Bush has said he hopes to exceed. The EPA recently proposed that municipal in cinerator operators be required to separate for recycling 25% of the waste they would otherwise burn. The budget proposal would, of course, have far broader application. In fact, Les ter Lave, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said it might prove to be too broad. He said the adminis tration plan, as described to him by a re porter, "in principle goes in the right di rection," But he prefers a narrow focus on consumer goods, such as charging de posits, like those now charged on soft-drink containers in many states, to divert news papers, batteries and other items from mu nicipal trash heaps. . Many economists have long advocated government levies that would force busi nesses and consumers to take account of the full "social cost" of their purchases, such as the cost to society of disposing of throw-away containers. The trickiest facet of such schemes is figuring out just how big of a fee to charge. "It's hard to know how much you want to tip the balance," one official said. Economists tend to focus more on per fecting the market than on the results. As Paul Portney, an economist and vice presi dent at Resources for the Future, a Wash ington think tank on environmental issues, said, "Once you've set the tax that reflects these social costs, if.it turns out that recy cling is still prohibitively expensive, then so be it." " But it isn't clear that Mr. Johnson's-se- company has been discussing within the lection will quiet dissident family members soft-drink industry a $20-a-ton fee on all who have indicated they want to sell their materials produced by paper mills, steel , stock and press for the sale of the entire mills, plastic plants and others. Producers company. A spokesman for the dissident would get rebates for every ton of recycled ! group, which controls more than 17% of materia] they use. Money collected from ; Campbell, said the selection of the new the tax would go to support state and local chief executive won't deter the group's ef- government recycling activities. ; forts. Although the Bush budget will be filled ; One of the dissidents, Dorrance Harnil- .ton, is a member of Campbell's board, I with so-called user fees and other vehicles for raising money that can be described as . which unanimously approved Mr. John son's selection. The spokesman for the dis sident group said Mrs. Hamilton voted for _ Mr. Johnson because "no one would deny the company needs a good far-sighted , * ..chief executive.'' But the spokesman said ." ~ ihe selection of Mr. Johnson doesn't re1 " * solve the "fundamental issues" the dis' * :senters have raised. "The real question is should this remain a family-dominated ' company with all the problems that en' tails?" the spokesman said. inaccurate to say Bob Vlasic ramrodded the thing." According to Mr. Lippincott, Campbell's final choice was culled from an initial list of 24 candidates assembled by an execu tive search firm. The Campbell screening committee ultimately interviewed three outside and two inside candidates. "We felt these were all very good choices," the di rector said. "But there was one person who stood out above all the rest."