Oregon reaches nearly $700M settlement with Monsanto over PCB contamination

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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Cleanup
PCB contamination is difficult to remove, as the compounds have accumulated in landfills, waterways and wildlife for decades.

Kevin Parrett of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality previously told OPB the state has been laboriously cleaning up PCB pollution for three decades. It’s often a mechanical process that requires the removal or capping of contaminated sediment.

PCBs are a major contaminant in the Portland Harbor Superfund site that’s expected to cost $1 billion to clean up through dredging and capping polluted soil at the bottom of the Willamette River.

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Experts say removing PCBs from the environment is the best way to prevent them from harming people, fish and wildlife. The Environmental Protection Agency classifies them as a probable carcinogen, and they are known to harm immune, reproductive and nervous systems in humans and other living things.

Despite the state’s sizable settlement, Rosenblum acknowledged during Thursday’s news conference it still wasn’t enough money to clean up all the state’s PCB pollution.

The biotech company did not respond to OPB’s request for an interview Thursday after a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge signed off on the settlement.

“The settlement terms reflect the unique challenges and trial procedures in this Oregon venue even though Monsanto voluntarily ceased production of PCBs in 1977 and never manufactured, used or disposed of PCBs in Oregon,” Monsanto’s parent company, Bayer, said in a statement.

In court documents, Monsanto argued that Oregon was wrong in claiming the company was the only source of the state’s PCB contamination because Monsanto didn’t manufacture the chemicals in Oregon and because the chemicals were also manufactured by other companies after Monsanto stopped producing them.

“In fact, PCBs are found in many consumer products today and used in Oregon,” attorneys for the company told the court. “The state paints a misleading portrait of Old Monsanto’s past manufacture of PCBs.”

A report from the Washington Department of Ecology in 2014 found PCBs were still showing up in everyday products such as paint, newspapers and cardboard food packaging."...