A Texas judge has issued final approval of Grupo Mexico SAB’s plan to regain control of copper miner Asarco LLC, ending a lengthy takeover battle with rival suitor Sterlite Industries.

The Mexico City-based conglomerate said Sunday that U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas, on Friday confirmed Grupo Mexico’s plan to pay $2.2 billion to Asarco’s creditors. The deal was previously recommended for approval by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Richard Schmidt.

The ruling will return control of Asarco to Americas Mining Corp., a Grupo Mexico subsidiary. The deal is expected to close by mid-December.

Washington state stands to receive more than $164 million under the reorganization to pay for the cleanup of arsenic, lead and other heavy metals and toxic pollutants released during operations at Asarco’s former smelter in Ruston and other company sites in the state. The federal government will receive more than $1 billion to clean up Superfund sites polluted by Asarco operations.

“We get paid the same whether it was Grupo or Sterlite,” Elliott Furst, a senior counsel in the ecology division of the Washington state Attorney General’s Office, said in September. “It’s hard to say who wins or loses. But it might be over.

“This has been going on since August 2005, and we would like to get the money and start cleaning up sites.”

The ruling could be the final chapter in the four-year-old case, which Schmidt called “perhaps the largest and most complex” in bankruptcy history involving environmental liabilities.

The Associated Press and The News Tribune