Deal reached to clean up pollution from closed Maryland paper mill Verso Corp.

Verso Corp. also agrees to pay $650,000 penalty to settle Potomac River lawsuit.

'The owners of the closed Luke paper mill in Western Maryland have agreed to clean up toxic pollution that has been seeping into the Potomac River and pay a $650,000 penalty, state officials and environmental groups announced Thursday.

Verso Luke LLC and its parent company, Verso Corp., signed a consent decree settling a federal lawsuit filed in March 2020 by the Environmental Integrity Project on behalf of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network. The Maryland Department of the Environment intervened in that lawsuit in May 2020 and added allegations that the seepage also had contaminated the land by the river.

“This long-awaited resolution of an even longer-standing pollution problem was hard won, but, as always in protecting our precious river, was well worth the struggle,” Brent Walls, the Upper Potomac Riverkeeper, said in a statement announcing the settlement.

The settlement comes nearly two years after an angler notified the Potomac riverkeeper group in April 2019 that a black substance was leaking into the North Branch of the Potomac River. The watershed group subsequently reported that its investigation had identified multiple seeps of the substance along the riverbank by the mill.'

https://www.bayjournal.com/news/pollution/deal-reached-to-clean-up-pollution-from-closed-maryland-paper-mill/article_ee781588-9339-11eb-9719-53eb1e31c846.html?