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The US government reached a $5.15 billion (£3.1bn) settlement with Anadarko Petroleum on Thursday over the cleanup of thousands of heavily polluted sites.
It resolves a legal battle over Tronox, a spinoff of the Andarko-owned Kerr-McGee Corporation.
The Justice Department said Kerr-McGee left behind a long legacy of environmental contamination — polluting Lake Mead in Nevada with rocket fuel, leaving radioactive waste piles throughout the Navajo Nation and dumping carcinogenic creosote throughout the country at wood-treating facilities.
Rather than pay for the environmental mess it created, the company shifted the liabilities into Tronox while Kerr-McGee kept its oil and gas assets.
“Kerr-McGee’s businesses all over this country left significant, lasting environmental damage in their wake,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole said.
“It tried to shed its responsibility for this damage and stick the United States with the huge cleanup bill.”