DuPont-Dow merger will hurt WV C8 victims ( Charleston Gazette- Mail)
Marty Chase June 24, 2016 (Posted here 8:45 A.M., 07 29 2016)
DuPont’s reckless and outrageous use of the toxic chemical C8 at its plant outside Parkersburg already has mushroomed into one of this country’s biggest-ever environmental and health disasters.
We wrote about it early this year following a blockbuster New York Times Sunday Magazine story in January which chronicled the lonely battle of a West Virginia farmer, a Cincinnati attorney and a few brave victims in Parkersburg to gain some small measure of compensation for devastating illnesses and deaths caused by polluted water and ground in and around the Washington works plant.
Ken Ward, the outstanding environmental reporter for this paper, has written hundreds of stories about it over the past 15 years or so. As terrible as the crisis is, matters have taken an alarming turn for the worse in recent months. DuPont has added a whole new dimension, shifting its C8 liabilities onto the shoulders of Chemours, a shaky-looking spinoff. Analysts are convinced it could represent a first step to avoid liabilities by pushing Chemours into bankruptcy.
Thanks to some intricate financial maneuvers surrounding DuPont’s pending merger with Dow Chemical, the outlook for any significant relief for the estimated 70,000 people in West Virginia and Ohio suffering from serious illnesses and side-effects from toxic ground and water look bleaker than ever before.
Here are a few relevant facts: DuPont faces more than 3,500 lawsuits for its liabilities in this fiasco, specifically for dumping C8 into rivers and streams near its Parkersburg plant and also releasing the toxic chemical into the Ohio River and into the air through the plant’s chimneys.
Through its pending merger with Dow, the combined chemical giants plan to unload all C8 liabilities (over $1 billion) onto Chemours.
Although a handful of cases are proceeding in Ohio, the prospects for most Washington plant workers or their families seeing significant compensation for the deaths and illnesses and other damages caused by DuPont look slimmer than ever. That’s because legal experts now estimate it will take 90 years for these cases to work through the legal system, given the current pace of about 40 cases a year. (You read that right — 90 years.)
Obviously, that means most if not all of the victims won’t be on the planet when their cases are finally settled.
While some in the business press are hyping Chemours stock these days (hello Fortune magazine), the simple fact is the spinoff has lost an astounding $133 million over its last three quarters and those losses are rising. Chemours lost $86 million in the fourth quarter alone. It may be only a matter of time before it files for bankruptcy protection.
Under terms of the pending DuPont-Dow merger, there’s a “separation agreement” requiring Chemours to indemnify DuPont for any costs in product liability, international property, commercial, environmental or antitrust lawsuits. DuPont, so far, is standing by earlier statements that these liabilities are their obligations and they will live up to them. Many who follow such matters closely are skeptical, to put it mildly.
“Liability is like contagious diseases,” Marie Reilly, a professor of corporate law and bankruptcy at Penn State Law School, told the Wilmington News Journal early this month. “You can pass it on to someone else and you still have it. It’s not like a baton in a relay race, where you don’t have it anymore.
”Fact is, Chemours already might be teetering on the brink of collapse. Its total capitalization is $1.24 billion, barely enough to cover its C8 liabilities. Because of market weakness in Teflon, titanium dioxide and other product categories, it’s losing money at a rapid clip.
Who stands to gain from this mess? Big hedge funds and sharp Wall Street traders stand to profit from Chemours’ recent stock run. And, of course, the law firms aren’t complaining. They have 90 years of lucrative work ahead of them.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and other politicians have pledged to fight for federal funding to help clean up the estimated $1 billion mess left behind by bankrupt coal companies in West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia. That’s certainly a laudable goal.
But what of a federal or state role in the Parkersburg C8 fiasco? Haven’t heard any mention of that. It’s a hot potato, for sure.
Maybe the anti-trust folks at the Justice Department should put the brakes on this DuPont-Dow merger until the C8 fallout is honestly reviewed, with the victims and their families in mind. Maybe we could get a national debate going on environmental justice. That might be one way to bring some good out of this horrendous situation.
You can read more at:
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/gazette-op-ed-commentaries.
And yet again folks, nothing in Vienna about the Cumulative effects over years of absorption OR the long term medical observation/ care provided to others? Still think some deals were made? And the just installed FOUR (4) Filtration Systems at Greenmont and now for some weeks NONE for South Vienna was why Mr. Rapp REFUSED to advise and allow me to be at the 6 July 2016 Meeting between City of Vienna; VUB, Burgess & Nipple and Chemours? Where it may be possible for some in this World to buy each other, most know you can not buy me? 'nuff said'.
(Paid for by the Candidate- Lawrence J. Wilson for Mayor of Vienna).