MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mitsui & Co Ltd's Intercontinental Terminals Co faces five environmental criminal charges following a March chemical fire at its Deer Park, Texas, petrochemical storage facility, reported Reuters with reference to local officials.
ITC was charged with polluting waterways that flow into the Gulf of Mexico, according to a statement by the Harris County district attorney. ITC could face penalties of up to USD100,000 for each of the five charges, according to Harris County.
ITC did not immediately return a call for comment.
After a fire caused a dike at the facility to break, "large (and still unknown) quantities" of toxic chemicals spilled into a nearby waterway for five days, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement.
"The discharge from the ITC fire into Tucker Bayou is a clear water pollution case," Alex Forrest, an environmental crimes division chief prosecutor with the district attorney's office, said in a statement.
As MRC informed previously, in late March 2019, state and local investigators began investigating a petrochemical storage company outside Houston, TX where a massive fire fed by giant tanks of fuel burned for days, darkening the skies with soot for dozens of miles. The blaze at Mitsui unit Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC) in Deer Park, Texas, began on Sunday, 17 March, and was not extinguished until early Wednesday, 20 March. It destroyed 11 tanks that can hold up to 80,000 barrels of gasoline and other fuels.
Mitsui Chemicals is a leading manufacturer and supplier of value added specialty chemicals, plastics and materials for the automotive, healthcare, packaging, agricultural, building, and semiconductor and electronics markets. Mitsui Chemicals is a Japanese Chemicals company, a part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company has a turnover of around 15 billion USD and has business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. The company mainly deals in performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials.
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