CABLES TO BE REMOVED FROM TAHOE

AT&T’s Pac Bell subsidiary has settled a lawsuit conservationists filed under a U.S. law more typically cited in Superfund cases, agreeing to spend up to $1.5 million to remove 8 miles of toxic telephone cables that were abandoned on the bottom of Lake Tahoe decades ago.

A U.S. judge in Sacramento recently signed the consent decree in the suit the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance filed in January.

The abandoned cables — replaced with fiber optic ones in the 1980s — contain more than 65 tons of toxic lead that is polluting the alpine lake on the CaliforniaNevada line, the lawsuit said.

In addition to violating state water quality protections, the suit said, the more than 3 pounds of lead per foot of cable constitutes solid waste regulated under the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Pac Bell knew the cables they owned and operated contained lead that eventually would leak into the 1,644foot-deep lake, the lawsuit said. Lead in both solid and dissolved forms is listed as known to cause cancer and reproductive toxicity, it said.

“All of the cables are damaged and discharging lead into Lake Tahoe,” the lawsuit said.

AT&T said it hired a firm to collect water samples both close to the cables and far from them, and said the samplings did not detect any release of lead in Lake Tahoe.

“We are committed to preserving one of the most scenic freshwater lakes in the Sierra Nevada. We have agreed to remove these cables because they are no longer in use, however, we dispute any notion that they were a source of pollution,” AT&T said in a statement. “We are disappointed to see the Alliance take such an adversarial posture after we have agreed to work with them to remove these cables.”

The settlement agreement with the Stocktonbased sportfishing alliance states that “the parties agree that defendant makes no admission of liability or of any other issue of law whatsoever regarding the claims made by plaintiff.”

Initial cost estimates for cable removal range from $275,000 to $550,000. But Pac Bell agreed to deposit $1.5 million in an account to guard against overruns, according to the settlement U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremy Peterson signed Nov. 4.

The cables were discovered by divers for the nonprofit group Below the Blue as part of an effort to remove foreign debris from the alpine lake.