Exide can abandon polluted battery recycler in LA County in two weeks, judge rules

Exide Technologies can abandon its heavily contaminated battery recycling plant in Vernon and stop paying for environmental protections preventing the spread of toxic dust to neighboring cities as soon as Oct. 30, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The court’s support of Exide’s bankruptcy plan allows the company to avoid liability for decades for environmental harm to the largely Latino communities surrounding the plant and dumps the cost of cleaning up the contaminated property — estimated at nearly $100 million — at the feet of California’s taxpayers.

Judge Christopher Sontchi, presiding over a federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, barred the international company from abandoning the property before Oct. 30 to give California officials time to prepare for the transition. Exide’s funding of an $800,000-a-month tent containing the toxic dust inside the plant is covered by insurance until that date.

If California is “unable to transfer this property in the next two weeks, it’s because of their own bureaucracy, or their inability to act, not because of anything the debtors are doing,” Sontchi said in his […]

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