The company will also conduct site investigations and, if contamination is found, will remediate it to standards approved by state and federal officials. The consent decree grew out of Morton's discovery and disclosure, in 1996, of irregularities in the plant's reports of its waste water discharge into the Escatawpa River. After further investigation, the plant learned that its environmental manager was filing false waste water discharge and groundwater monitoring reports with the state Department of Environmental Quality. The environmental manager was immediately terminated by Morton for these actions and has been indicted and pleaded guilty to falsifying reports. Subsequent investigations into the plant's environmental practices found additional concerns regarding the disposal of chemical waste into an approved underground injection well.
Environmental compliance is built on trust.
Today's complex chemical plants must not only have systems in place that provide accurate ways of measuring and monitoring these operations but people fully committed to obeying the law and respecting human health and the environment. Our goal as a company is to meet or exceed all applicable laws and regulations and strive for continual improvement in our environmental, health and safety performance. I am confident our workers at the Moss Point facility and the surrounding community are not at risk as a result of our chemical operations. Many of the necessary environmental management systems are already in place and we are committed to bringing the facility into full compliance. The company also agreed to independent third-party audits of other former Morton sites it owns to assure they are in environmental compliance.