MAINE MORNING STAR • June 25, 2024
More than a dozen projects have been given the green light to start efforts to address long standing mercury contamination in the Penobscot River Estuary. These projects, chosen by the court-appointed Trustee, will be funded with settlement money paid by the former owners of an Orrington chemical plant that from roughly 1967 to 2000 released mercury into the water. That settlement was reached in 2022 and requires Mallinckrodt, formerly Holtrachem, to pay at least $187 million to restore the river after it was sued by Maine People’s Alliance and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2000.