Cleanup headache shared Honeywell studied for HoltraChem role

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While HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. is crying poverty when it comes to cleaning up its recently closed facility in Orrington, state and federal officials are looking into whether any larger corporate entities – including a major defense contractor – may be on the hook for any environmental cleansing that needs to be done.

HoltraChem’s ties to Honeywell International, a $25 billion company that makes aerospace and transportation products, have received little public scrutiny. A company spokesman said this week that Honeywell owned a minority share of HoltraChem and “dissolved the business” last year. HoltraChem announced in September that it was ceasing operations at the Orrington plant in October.

HoltraChem’s ties to Honeywell have become important because state and federal officials worry that the chemical manufacturer, which claims it has very little money on hand, will soon go under, leaving contaminated buildings, soil and water at its abandoned plant on the bank of the Penobscot River. If Honeywell were found to be partially responsible for environmental damage, the company would have to pay some of the cleanup costs.

HoltraChem was the latest of several companies that used large amounts of mercury to manufacture chlorine and other chemicals mainly for paper companies. Eighty tons of mercury remains at the plant.

Tom Crane, a Honeywell spokesman in Morristown, N.J., said Thursday that Honeywell and the other owners of HoltraChem, which he declined to name, decided to dissolve the company last year.

He said he did not know whether Honeywell would bear any liability for future cleanup of the Maine facility, but he believed that Honeywell helped write the plant’s closure plan. An initial version of the plan was rejected by the DEP for a lack of details in December.

Crane said Honeywell was “in discussions about cleanup.”

Emily Metzger, another spokesman for Honeywell, said her company had “a small investment interest, not a management interest” in HoltraChem. She said Honeywell was a minority owner of the HoltraChem plants in Maine and North Carolina.

Metzger said she did not know how large a stake Honeywell had in HoltraChem, or how much money it had invested in the now-closed chemical company.

In a press release in August, Honeywell said it would write off $300 million to $350 million related to an investment loss “in a basic chemical manufacturing company” and divestiture of “non-core operations.”

An article in a trade publication, Chemical Week, in August, just a month before the shutdown of the Orrington facility was announced, said Honeywell was divesting itself of its interests in HoltraChem.

AlliedSignal Inc., another defense contractor, helped HoltraChem finance the purchase of the chlor-alkali operations of the former LCP/Hanlin group in 1993, according to the Chemical Week story. Those operations consisted of plants in Orrington, Riegelwood, N.C., and Brunswick, Ga. AlliedSignal merged with Honeywell in 1999. General Electric is now in the process of acquiring Honeywell.

The Georgia plant was closed in 1993 and became a Superfund site. The North Carolina plant was closed shortly after the one in Orrington.

A September story in the same publication said that Honeywell had decided to liquidate HoltraChem.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection and federal Environmental Protection Agency are in the process of sorting out HoltraChem’s corporate ties.

Ed Logue, the DEP’s eastern Maine regional director, said his agency and the EPA are investigating whether other entities, including Honeywell, should be held financially responsible for cleaning up the plant.

“We’re trying to get everyone … whether they come on their own or are brought to the table kicking and screaming,” Logue said earlier this week.

One past owner, Mallinckrodt Inc., a St. Louis chemical company, has already agreed that it should be held partially responsible for the cost of cleanup, Logue said.

The HoltraChem site likely will never be completely cleaned up so that there is zero contamination there, Logue added. Some portions of the facility may be fenced off and never used again, he said.

Ernest Waterman of the EPA’s Superfund unit said his agency’s investigation is in preliminary stages. He said HoltraChem owed Honeywell some money, but he had not uncovered whether Honeywell was a part owner of the company.

“At face value, HoltraChem existed as itself – a private company,” Waterman said.

No matter who owns HoltraChem, the facility in Orrington most likely would qualify as a Superfund site because of the amount of contamination there, Waterman said.

Under this program, the federal government would clean up the site first and decide later who should pay for it.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection had hoped that HoltraChem would come up with a comprehensive assessment of the degree of contamination of the plant and how it should be cleaned up.

Instead, in a plant closure application it was required by law to file with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, HoltraChem said it had only $1.37 million on hand, enough money to run a mandatory wastewater treatment facility for just five months.

The company said it had no money to investigate whether buildings and soil at the plant are contaminated with mercury and other hazardous chemicals, and, if so, how they would be cleaned up.

In its application, the company estimated it would cost more than $6 million to remove and decontaminate buildings and piping, operate the wastewater treatment facility, and monitor the site for groundwater contamination for five years.

As officials investigate whom to hold liable for cleanup of the mercury at Orrington, a related drama was playing out on the high seas this week, as a vessel loaded with 18 tons of mercury from the HoltraChem plant sought a home. Rejected by the Indian government, the unidentified vessel reportedly made an about-face at Port Said, Egypt, and headed back to the United States.

As part of its shutdown efforts last fall, the 130 tons of mercury HoltraChem had stored for turning saltwater into chlorine was placed in canisters and prepared for shipment. The mercury was bought by DF Goldsmith Chemical and Metal Corp., an Illinois chemical broker, and shipped by truck to Albany, N.Y., to be stored by Mercury Waste Solutions.

In December, 18 tons of the mercury was shipped to India, the largest importer of mercury from the United States. Pressure from environmental activists and the country’s dock workers’ union, however, convinced Indian officials to reject the mercury, which was to be used in medical instruments and other manufacturing processes.

A spokesman for Air-Sea Forwarders Inc., which handled the transfer, refused to divulge details about the ship or its route.

A spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said her agency had not decided what to do if the mercury is returned there.

Jennifer Post said her agency was investigating the situation to determine if all of New York’s environmental laws had been followed. She said her agency has not blocked future shipments of mercury from Maine, as long as they are properly documented.

The manager of Mercury Waste Solutions in Albany said Thursday that the New York DEC officials had visited his company that morning and found no problems.

Eric Figueroa said he is unhappy to find himself in the middle of an international incident. “We are unwilling passengers on a freight train from hell,” he said.

Asked if he would take more mercury from Maine, he said: “Not if I can help it.”

Eighty tons of mercury remains in storage in Orrington.

David Lennett, manager of the Maine DEP’s bureau of remediation and waste management, said his agency would wait a few days for the situation to settle out before deciding how to proceed. But, he said, the agency would seek to ensure that the remaining mercury was safely stored at HoltraChem.