The state of Maine is suing the owners of a toxic site along the Penobscot River.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection filed a lawsuit against Mallinckrodt US LLC on Tuesday in Penobscot County Superior Court. Mallinckrodt is supposed to clean up the former HoltraChem site in Orrington.
It is one of the state’s most contaminated sites, according to the DEP. Mallinckrodt has failed to meet the DEP’s remediation standards, which the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed in 2014.
The lawsuit requests civil penalties, according to the DEP.
HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. operated at the site off Industrial Way in Orrington from 1967 to 1982 and produced 23,000 pounds of toxic mercury waste each year while manufacturing chemicals, including caustic soda, chlorine bleach, hydrochloric acid and the pesticide chloropicrin for papermaking and other industries.
Toxins are found in the soil, groundwater and Penobscot River, the DEP said. It issued orders to make sure the site clean up happened in a way that would protect public health and the environment, but large areas of soil are still on site.
Mallinckrodt, the last owner while HoltraChem was in existence, has failed to submit an adequate plan to clean up the ground, according to previous reporting. The DEP issued notices of violation.
Mallinckrodt has not made any meaningful progress to clean the site since 2023, according to the DEP. Before that, progress was made, but it slowed in 2018 as Mallinckrodt made its first of several attempts to say it has met the DEP’s requirements.