AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced an agreed judgment Wednesday to resolve allegations of environmental quality law violations against Gulf Chemical & Metallurgical Corporation.
Under the terms of an agreed judgment, GCMC must pay $7.5 million for its Freeport industrial manufacturing facility's alleged failure to comply with the Texas Clean Air Act. The agreement is the third largest recovery from a single facility since the Clean Air Act's inception.
"Enforcing our state's environmental quality laws is critical to protecting Texas' precious natural resources," Abbott said. "Gulf Chemical's Freeport facility failed to comply with the law and therefore faced an aggressive enforcement action from the state of Texas. As a result, that facility now faces one of the largest Texas Clean Air Act penalties in state history."
In 2011, Abbott's office filed an environmental enforcement action against GCMC for allegedly unlawfully emitting air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, ammonia and various airborne metals. GCMC also allegedly discharged wastewater containing toxic and hazardous metals.
As part of the judgment, GCMC must pay civil penalties of $7.5 million and institute real-time metals monitoring equipment. The monitoring system is state-of-the-art technology never before implemented at any Texas industrial facility.
Texas AG announces $7.5 million judgment against manufacturing facility
