Nutrien (NYSE:NTR) has agreed to spend $84M to clean up more than 1B lbs of hazardous waste and to pay a $1.5M fine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Justice and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said Thursday.
The company “will provide over $84M of financial assurance” for the cleanup, final closure and 50 years of monitoring and maintenance, according to statements from the federal and state agencies.
The waste is in acidic lakes atop piles of phosphogypsum at the PCS Nitrogen Fertilizer plant in Geismar, Louisiana, which made industrial and agricultural phosphate products for agriculture and industry from the 1960s until it closed in 2018.
Nutrien (NTR) closed -4.9% in Thursday’s trading, as Credit Suisse slapped a Sell-equivalent rating on the shares.