Lawsuit against chemical plant heads to federal court
A lawsuit filed against the owner of the defunct HoltraChem plant in Orrington over its pollution of the Penobscot River is heading to a federal court next week.
The Bangor Daily News reported the lawsuit, filed by the Maine People's Alliance and Natural Resources Defense Council in 2000, seeks to force Mallinckrodt US LLC, owner of the defunct chemical plant, to study how mercury from the plant impacted the river's ecosystem and then conduct a cleanup of the contamination.
Mallinckrodt has previously agreed to take responsibility for only the Orrington plant and a small section of the Penobscot River, spending millions of dollars on a river study, but also has been fighting to delay the beginning of the cleanup phase. The company had lost a previous lawsuit by the Maine's People Alliance in 2002, which determined the company was responsible for the contamination.
The Department of Marine Resources closed a seven-square-mile section of the lower Penobscot River to lobster and crab fishing earlier this month after concerns over elevated mercury levels.
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