The settlement is said to be the largest in state history regarding contamination emanating from a single company location, Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said.

Under the agreement, Solvay will pay $75 million for damages to the state’s natural resources department, along with $3.7 million to compensate the state for costs related to its subsidiary’s previous contamination.

The chemical group also must pay $214 million upfront as a guarantee that the cleanup effort will continue to be funded without the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) having to persuade it to cough up more money.

Similar to the recent class action settlement between 3M and US water utilities nationwide, Solvay has also agreed to compensate the state’s treasury for natural resource damages to the drinking water, in this case a 37-square-mile area around its production facility at West Deptford.

Solvay said it is working with the town of West Deptford to install a drinking water system with equipment that prevents migration of contaminants as well as building offsite and onsite pump-and-treat system for potentially impacted groundwater.

Also as part of the settlement, the chemicals and plastics producer will be obligated to comply with any new standards adopted by the state or the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the next six years

PFAS contamination of drinking water has been a hot-button issue in US states for years but the EPA has only recently begun drawing up plans to regulate discharges at federal level – in some cases, pollution levels of “zero” will be mandated. At state level, New Jersey is seen as currently having among the strictest standards.

State authorities are being careful to clearly spell out what they require of potential industrial producers. Some have hinted that the Belgian group, like some of its peers including DuPont and its former chemicals business, Chemours, in the past failed to act on cleanup mandates.

In 2020, New Jersey sued all of the companies. To date, Solvay is the first chemical producer to reach a remediation agreement, the state said.

At the time, Solvay was cited for not fixing the issues of contaminated drinking water in the environs of its West Deptford site, where its specialty polymers arm has made fluoropolymers in the facility acquired from Ausimont in 2002.

Some of the site’s pollution, which includes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) as well as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), is thought to date back to the 20^th century. 

New Jersey’s environmental protection agency has created a dedicated website for the public to review the details of the deal with Solvay: dep.nj.gov/solvay

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist