US to pay $20m share of cleanup costs at Tronox site

17 January 2006 20:49  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--The US government will pay $20.5m (Euro17m) to Tronox to settle a lawsuit and to cover part of the cleanup costs at the company’s perchlorate-contaminated Nevada production site, Tronox said on Tuesday.

 

Tronox, formerly known as Kerr-McGee Chemical, filed suit against the US government in 2000 seeking compensation for part of the cleanup cost at the Henderson, Nevada site. 

 

The US Navy had owned the ammonium perchlorate plant and other equipment at the Henderson site for about 10 years until 1962, when the property and facilities were acquired by a Tronox predecessor firm. The firm halted commercial production of ammonium perchlorate there in 1998 and began environmental remediation under direction of the Nevada Environmental Protection Division.

 

In addition to winning the $20.5m cash payment as the government’s share of site cleanup, Tronox also has secured agreement from the US to cover 21% of remediation costs after 2010 when Tronox’s remediation insurance coverage for the site expires.

 

Tronox said that as of September, it has spent some $122m on site cleanup at Henderson and it has met a $61m deductible on an insurance policy that will cover as much as $100m of remediation costs there through 2010.

 

Perchlorate has been used for decades by the US national defence and space industries, chiefly as a component of rocket fuel and explosives.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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