The government of India says it will refuse shipments of mercury from the closed HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. plant in Orrington, according to an international news service.

Also this week, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection said it will reject the company’s plan for closure and cleanup of the Penobscot River site because it is “lacking,” in the words of a state official. A spokesman for the company said it had not been notified of that decision Friday.

The plant closed in September and the company had hoped to find a buyer for the property. When no buyer was found, it filed a plan to close the facility, which included details on how contamination, particularly mercury, a neurotoxin, will be removed from buildings and the surrounding ground and water. In the plan, HoltraChem said it didn’t have the necessary financial resources for such a cleanup.

As part of the closure process, the company has begun shipping mercury, which it used to make chemicals mostly for paper companies, to a reprocessing plant in Albany, N.Y. Nearly half the 130 tons of mercury has been shipped to Albany. It is ultimately destined for India, a major importer of mercury from the United States.

A senior official with the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests said her country would not allow the mercury to be removed from ships when it arrives at an undisclosed location, according to the InterPress Service.

“We have alerted the customs and port authorities and asked them to seize this illegal consignment,” Indrani Chandrasekhar told the news service.

“Basically, it is the responsibility of the United States to stop it … We are doing everything we can to stop the import of this mercury, which is banned,” she added.

India bans the importation of waste mercury, but not that of reprocessed mercury. The HoltraChem mercury has been reprocessed and is a legal commodity, not a hazardous waste, said Ed Logue of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. He said he did not understand on what grounds the mercury was being refused.

According to the U.S. International Trade Administration, India is the largest recipient of mercury exports from this country. It is used to make thermometers and to manufacture chlorine and caustic soda, chemicals that were made by HoltraChem.

Although tons of mercury are imported into India each year, this mercury has attracted a lot of attention because environmental activists here have made a big issue of the fact that it is being shipped to a developing country with lax environmental regulations rather than being taken out of circulation.

Gov. Angus King had asked the U.S. Department of Defense to add the HoltraChem mercury to stockpiles the agency now maintains. The department said it could not do so because federal law allows it to stockpile only mercury it owns.

Groups in Maine are hopeful that the state’s congressional delegation will work to change the law so that the Defense Department can take the mercury.

“The message is simple. The U.S. government should be responsible … and ensure that the mercury is locked up,” said Michael Belliveau, toxics project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

NRCM and other Maine groups have worked with environmental organizations in India to fight the mercury shipment.

“We will do everything possible, nonviolently, to stop it from being unloaded in the Indian port and return it to sender,” Madhumita Dutta, coordinator of Toxics Link in New Delhi, wrote Friday in e-mail to the Bangor Daily News.

“We don’t want this shipment to come to India on environment and health grounds,” she wrote. “What is harmful for the workers, people and the environment of the United States is harmful for Indian workers, people and the environment.”

She said her group has secured promises from the India dockworkers union that its members will not unload the mercury if it arrives in India. The groups involved don’t know where in India the mercury is slated to be sent.

Back in the United States, the news continued to be bad for HoltraChem this week. The DEP’s Logue said the company’s closure plan was rejected because it was lacking in specifics on how contamination would be cleaned up and how such a cleanup would be financed. The company said it did not have the resources to meet state cleanup standards.

Logue said this was not unexpected. He said the state would develop a closure plan for the site and work with the company and the plant’s past owner to come up with the money to clean up the site adequately. The former owner, Mallinckrodt Inc., is still financially responsible for part of the cleanup.

As a final option, the Superfund program “is always an option,” Logue said. Under this program, the federal Environmental Protection Agency would clean up the site, and then go after the responsible parties to recoup its costs later.