EPEC Agrees to $23.4 Million Settlement to Clean Up Texas Superfund Site

By Jennifer Griffith

Published on April 02, 2007

The site, about 65 miles northeast of Houston and known as Turtle Bayou Site, is adjacent to small rural communities with crop land, pasture, range, and forest areas.

Donald R. Lang and Wallis W. Smith, past owners of the Turtle Bayou Site, allowed waste transport companies to use the area for illegal disposal of wastes from the late 1960s until about 1979. Additionally, Tenneco Chemicals, EPEC’s corporate predecessor, disposed of wastes at the site that were generated from its vinyl chloride monomer facility in Pasadena, Texas.

EPEC will conduct an investigation and cleanup of the site estimated at $13.4 million. Remaining funds of the settlement will be reimbursed to the EPA for its costs. Part of the payments to EPA will be used for its supervision of the cleanup activities. Any remaining money will be transferred to Superfund, a revolving fund created by Congress for cleaning up highly contaminated sites.

Previous lawsuits filed by the U.S. Justice Department in 1998 and 2002 secured funding to partially clean up the same site. The current EPEC settlement requires that all remaining contamination be eliminated from the area.

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