U.S. chemicals company Tronox filed a bankruptcy reorganization plan that it said promises a significant recovery for unsecured creditors and sets up trusts to resolve environmental claims.

Unsecured creditors are expected to recover 80-100% of their $470.6 million in claims, Tronox said in a filing with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan on Wednesday. Secured creditors owed about $1 million would be fully repaid, it said. Tronox also said creditors with an estimated $1.4 billion to $5.2 billion of environmental claims would have their cases addressed in accordance with an Environmental Claims Settlement Agreement.

It said this agreement sets up environmental response trusts to assume Tronox's liabilities and responsibility for cleanup costs. The trusts, funded with $115 million to $145 million of cash and other assets, will also receive the right to 88% of recoveries from litigation involving Anadarko Petroleum.

Tronox said the reorganized company's funded debt is expected to be no more than $517 million once the plan goes into effect. The company's disclosure statement accompanying the Chapter 11 plan requires bankruptcy court approval before creditors can vote on the plan.

The U.S. operations of Tronox, which makes titanium dioxide pigment used in paint, plastics and paper, filed for Chapter 11 protection in January 2009, less than three years after Kerr-McGee spun it off. Anadarko bought Kerr-McGee for $18 billion a few months after the spinoff.

Tronox sued both in May 2009, saying Kerr-McGee had saddled it with environmental liabilities that set the company up to fail. Federal investigators in Manhattan as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have filed civil charges against Anadarko and Kerr-McGee, accusing them of fraudulently trying to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental liabilities.