By SONYA KIMBRELL
Advocate staff writer
Published: Apr 27, 2007 - Page: 4b
Shintech Louisiana LLC agreed to pay $426,530 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to resolve environmental violations, with the United States agreeing to dismiss a civil complaint against the company.
The plastics manufacturer has corrected infractions at two of its plants in Addis that included improper handling of hazardous waste, according to EPA spokeswoman Tressa Tillman.
Tillman said the complaint against the polyvinyl choride manufacturing plants stems from inspections in 2004 and 2005.
The Department of Justice had filed the complaint against Shintech on behalf of the EPA, according to U.S. Attorney David Dugas.
“They (EPA and Shintech) negotiated a civil penalty,” Dugas said.
According to the complaint, Shintech violated the:
n Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by failing to identify hazardous waste, keep records of its hazardous waste and obtain the required approval to manage and store hazardous waste.
n Clean Air Act through failures of reporting, recordkeeping, inspecting and conducting audits.
n Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act by failing to submit required toxic-chemical release reporting forms.
According to an EPA news release, these documents have since been filed by Shintech, and the violations have been corrected.
“We want to be as thorough as we can in an investigation,” Tillman said. She added that the EPA worked with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Department of Justice in the investigation.
Robert Holden, attorney for Shintech, did not return messages The Advocate left Thursday afternoon at his office and on his cell phone.
Shintech is the subsidiary in the U.S. of Shin-Etsu Co. Ltd. of Japan, and is the largest volume producer of PVC in the world. PVC is used to make materials that include piping, siding, flooring, blood bags, sterile packaging and intravenous tubing.
The plant been operating in Addis since 2000 and Shintech began construction in October 2005 on a 1,737-acre site south of Plaquemine.
The site is the former home of Ashland Chemical Co. Scheduled to be in production in late 2007, Shintech’s new facility will manufacture 1.3 billion pounds per year of polyvinyl chloride as well as the raw materials used to make PVC.
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