Genovique, one of Kent County’s largest employers and allegedly one of its biggest polluters, is being sold.
According to its website, its parent company Arsenal Capital Partners has entered into a “definitive agreement” to sell Genovique to Eastman Chemical Company.
The sales price was not stated. Genovique said its annual revenues total $135 million.
The oft re-named Genovique – a producer of benzoic acid, sodium benzoate and specialty plasticizers used for adhesives, sealants and PVC markets – has some 40 workers at its Worton Plant.
Environmental groups have filed complaints for years about chemical discharges at the site.
The Chester Riverkeeper conducted water quality sampling in 2007 and found high levels of phosphorus and BEHP (a carcinogen) coming from Genovique. The company’s permits from the state do not authorize discharges of those chemicals.
The Chester River Association joined other waterkeepers last year in a petition filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, charging the Maryland Department of the Environment with “systematic failure” to enforce regulations on pollutant discharges at sites such as Genovique’s.
The CRA complained that Genovique’s Worton plant got an MDE permit for discharges even though the agency has not reviewed the site’s stormwater runoff as the law requires.
Frequent changes of ownership and its name have long frustrated those trying to monitor its operations.
Robert Sipes, Chestertown’s utilities manager, has noted that Genovique was named Velsicol until a few years ago, and before that it was named something else, and prior to that something else again.
Sipes said, with obvious disapproval, “They change their name every few years.”
While reporting “no imminent threat” to Chestertown’s water supply because of Genovique discharges, Sipes said the phosphorous concentrations spilled into the watershed at Worton have been extremely high, ranging up to 11.4 parts per million.
“What we don’t know is the volume,” Sipes told the Council.
The Chester River Association has a suit against Genovique/Velsicol for violating the Clean Water Act by piping phosophorous and other chemicals directly into a tributary of the Chester from its Worton plant.
CRA seeks fines of $32,500 a day against Velsicol for not complying with the law.
Clark says
That plant is passed from one corporation to another every few years. I think it is a game of hot potato, designed to avoid responsibility for the health effects of it’s pollution of the water table. I lived in a farmhouse on Chinquapin Road for a year and the water in my toilet was blue – I did not have any fancy sanitizer in the tank.
Doneitall says
Has this company ever been found not in compliance with existing regulations”? Just asking…