Maine regulators have accused the owner of property contaminated with mercury and other chemicals of trying to evade its responsibility to clean up the site.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection on Monday issued a notice of violation, the second this year, against Mallinckrodt US LLC/Medtronic.
In the notice, the department said that Mallinckrodt has failed to submit an adequate plan for the cleanup of the ground around the former HoltraChem plant off Industrial Way in Orrington.
“The Department disagrees with Mallinckrodt’s assertion that contamination remaining at the Site no longer poses a danger to public health and that further remediation in accordance with the Department Orders is unnecessary,” regulators wrote in a letter accompanying the notice of violation.
The pollution originated with the HoltraChem Manufacturing Co., which operated at the site from 1967 to 1982 and produced 23,000 pounds of toxic mercury waste each year while manufacturing chemicals, including caustic soda, chlorine bleach, hydrochloric acid and the pesticide chloropicrin, for papermaking and other industries.
In 2010, the Department of Environmental Protection ordered a cleanup of the site. By the time that order was issued, Mallinckrodt was the last owner of HoltraChem still in existence.
That order has been heavily litigated, and Mallinckrodt has exhausted its appeals before the Maine Business and Consumer Court and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which both upheld the department’s cleanup requirements.
The state considers the site a hazard to both human and environmental health and requires the removal of all contaminated soil.
Cleanup began in 2014, and the department now wants Mallinckrodt to focus its efforts on cleaning up the area immediately in and around the former manufacturing plant. But in this week’s notice of violation, regulators allege that “Mallinckrodt has repeatedly attempted to evade this clear requirement.”
The department acknowledged that this presents technical challenges for Mallinckrodt but considers this cleanup “non-negotiable.”
It called the plans submitted by Mallinckrodt “unacceptable” and said that they don’t go far enough to ensure all contaminated soil is removed from the property.
The department has given Mallinckrodt 30 days to submit adequate works plans, establish a trust fund to provide financial assurance for the cleanup as required under the 2010 order, and affirm that it plans to meet the requirements for the cleanup.
If Mallinckrodt fails to do so, the state may pursue additional enforcement actions against it.
