Mosaic Fertilizer LLC has reached a settlement with the federal government that involves spending hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of alleged environmental violations at company facilities in Florida and Louisiana, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday. She said the settlement between EPA and Mosaic was part of an industrywide crackdown by EPA on fertilizer manufacturers.
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Under the agreement, Mosaic will pay a $8 million fine and spend about $170 million on new on-site waste management and recovery processes at facilities in the states. The EPA accused Mosaic employees of mixing corrosive materials from fertilizer operations with wastewater and solid waste produced during mineral processing.
EPA administrator Cynthia Giles called the case “a major victory for clean water, public health and communities across Florida and Louisiana”.
Mosaic Fertilizer has reached a $2 billion settlement with state and federal environmental regulators and the U.S. Department of Justice over funding for the long-term disposal of massive phosphogypsum waste piles and the treatment of 60 billion pounds of wastewater from its plants in Florida and St. James Parish, authorities and the company said Thursday.
Mosaic has also been ordered to pay a $5 million civil penalty to the United States, $1.45 million to the state of Florida and $1.55 million to the state of Louisiana.
Mosaic stores the waste in 500-foot-high piles that span more than 600 acres at eight facilities in Florida and Louisiana. The deal still needs to be finalized by the courts.
Joc O’Rourke, Mosaic’s president and CEO, said in a statement that the company is happy to bring the matter to a close. “Moreover, through this settlement, we establish critical financial assurance to cover the enormous closure and care costs at all these facilities”.
Mosaic makes a commonly used phosphorus-based fertilizer, the production of which creates tons of solid waste and polluted water. This sets the standard for our continuing enforcement of RCRA in the entire phosphoric acid industry. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed – a few indicating strength, a few showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks.
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“This settlement represents our most significant enforcement action in the mining and mineral processing arena, and will have a significant impact on bringing all Mosaic facilities into compliance with the law”, John C. Cruden, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s environment and natural resources unit, said in a statement. Three of the facilities are located in the Bay area: New Wales, Bartow, and Riverview.
