ExxonMobil has reached a settlement with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a case involving illegal storage of over one billion gallons of hazardous waste at the Agrifos Fertilizer site in Pasadena, Texas.
ExxonMobil, which sold the site to Agrifos Fertilizer in 1998, while retaining closure and post-closure responsibility for the site’s waste impoundments, violated the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by commingling hazardous waste with acidic process wastewater stored in the impoundments.
The settlement agreement requires the company to spend more than $150m to close the impoundments and dispose of the hazardous waste at the site and take the responsibility for post-closure care, including groundwater monitoring, from the impoundments for the next 50 years.
Exxon Mobil will conduct the majority of the clean-up work at the site, which includes a mineral processing facility that extracts phosphorus from mineral ores to produce phosphoric acid, while Agrifos will be responsible for the remaining activities.
The agreement with ExxonMobil forms part of EPA’s national enforcement effort that focuses on compliance in the phosphoric acid industry as these facilities generate toxic and hazardous waste and pose a high risk to human health and the environment.