Exide Technologies LLC is plowing ahead with efforts to walk away from contaminated sites in 10 states through bankruptcy, over a challenge from authorities in California, home to some of the battery maker’s most toxic facilities, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lead and arsenic contamination at a former battery-recycling plant in Vernon, near Los Angeles, poses a continuing threat to schools, parks and homes in working-class, primarily Latino neighborhoods, according to state officials. Exide is being broken up in its third bankruptcy proceeding and has said it doesn’t have the money to clean up the site. Once a central element of Exide’s business plan, providing access to cheap lead, the Vernon facility was shut down in 2015 as part of a deal for the company to avoid federal criminal prosecution. The company’s U.S. operating businesses have been sold, and bondholders, including AllianceBernstein LP and D.E. Shaw Galvanic Portfolios LLC, are positioned to take over Exide’s battery-making operations outside the U.S. That leaves the Vernon facility and other shut-down sites in states including Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas—facilities that Exide wants to park in a trust supplied with funding for cleanup.
