Court Lets Exide Abandon CA Toxic Site. Taxpayers Will Fund Cleanup

"A bankruptcy court ruled Friday that Exide Technologies may abandon its shuttered battery recycling plant in Vernon, leaving a massive cleanup of lead and other toxic pollutants at the site and in surrounding neighborhoods to California taxpayers.

The decision by Chief Judge Christopher Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware, made over the objections of California officials and community members, marks the latest chapter in a decades-long history of government failures to protect the public from brain-damaging lead, cancer-causing arsenic and other pollutants from the facility.

The plan’s confirmation only deepens a fiasco that has subjected working-class Latino communities across southeast Los Angeles County to chronic and dangerous levels of soil contamination and made the area a symbol of environmental injustice."

Tony Barboza reports for the Los Angeles Times October 16, 2020.

SEE ALSO:

"Exide’s Bankruptcy Plan Approved Over California’s Concerns" (Bloomberg Environment)

Source: LA Times, 10/19/2020