Washington: The US saw the largest pollution cleanup settlement in history on Saturday according to a report in the New York Times (NYT) and Huffington Post. The department of justice and the environmental protection agency announced on Thursday a $5.15 billion settlement with a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum.
The settlement stems from pollution left behind by the KerrMcGee Corporation, which was acquired by Anadarko in 2006, the reports said.
KerrMcGee’s decades long legacy of polluting industries dates back to at least 1928, and included uranium mines, wood treatment facilities and chemical manufacturing plants.
The department of justice claimed that between 2002 and 2005, KerrMcGee transferred the more profitable oil and gas portions of its company to a new entity, referred to in the case as “New KerrMcGee.”In 2006, it transferred other parts of its company associated with the years of pollution into a separate company, Tronox, which was left insolvent. Tronox couldn’t pay the costs of the environmental cleanup and went into bankruptcy in 2009.
The government argued that KerrMcGee devised this scheme to evade responsibility for cleanup and instead passed the cleanup costs on to local communities and the federal Superfund programme, reports said. A court last December found KerrMcGee guilty of fraudulent conveyance.The court also held the new company and its parent, Anadarko, liable for the cleanup costs.
