Canadian owner OKs $84M in work, $1.5M fine; Louisiana plant

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The company that owns a closed fertilizer plant in Louisiana has agreed to clean up more than a billion pounds of hazardous waste and to pay a $1.5 million fine, federal and state agencies said Thursday.

PCS Nitrogen Fertilizer LP “will provide over $84 million of financial assurance” for the cleanup, final closure and 50 years of monitoring and maintenance, said statements from the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Justice Department, and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

The agreement will "ensure that the long-term closure of its facility is protective of the environment,” said EPA enforcement official Larry Starfield. “This is a very important outcome as the facility is located in an area prone to hurricanes and the financial assurance secured will protect taxpayers from paying future closure and cleanup costs.”

The Canadian company that owns the plant changed its name from Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan to Nutrien with a merger in 2018, but U.S. documents refer to the plant as PCS Nitrogen.

“Nutrien has long been cooperating with State and Federal authorities, and these settlements formally document the work Nutrien has done, and continues to do,” the Saskatoon-based company wrote on its website.

The announcement starts a 45-day public comment period, after which a federal judge in Baton Rouge will decide whether to approve it.

The waste is in acidic lakes atop vast piles of phosphogypsum at the PCS Nitrogen Fertilizer LP site in Geismar, about 20 miles southeast of Baton Rouge.

PCS Nitrogen has said it can clean the liquid to meet standards for drinking water, and applied last year for a permit to discharge such water into the Mississippi River.

The water application is still under consideration, Louisiana Department of...