Follow-up: Battery Maker Exide Declares Bankruptcy
Pollution woes and lagging sales have driven battery maker Exide into bankruptcy for the second time in a decade. For the city of Frisco, the timing couldn't be more inopportune.
In exchange for shutting down an Exide smelter that had been pumping lead and arsenic into the air and nearby Stewart Creek for decades, the city purchased a buffer zone from the company around the site's polluted epicenter. Frisco and Exide have submitted plans with the state environmental regulator to clean up what's known as the "J-Parcel." Exide, meanwhile, would maintain possession of the actual smelter site.
With the battery maker struggling financially, seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections -- and, potentially, relief from environmental liabilities -- Monday's news creates uncertainty surrounding the future of the toxic site.
On Downwinders At Risk last week, Jim Schermbeck pondered a possible silver lining in an Exide insolvency. "The upside of an Exide bankruptcy is that now the company won't be able to hold the rest of the city hostage by keeping the site a toxic dump forever," he writes. "Because it won't own it anymore. Going belly up means there are other options besides the ones Exide was dictating because of its ownership."
More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/06/battery_maker_exide_declares_b.php .
Related thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10789226
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