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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The federal government is accusing U.S. Magnesium of dumping carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls in ditches and waste ponds on the Great Salt Lake's west side.
The suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court seeks to force company owner Ira Rennert, the Renco Group and Rennert's trust to clean up the problem and stop making it worse.
The Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department will seek maximum penalties, but the amount isn't clear, said Justice Department spokesman Ben Porritt.
U.S. Magnesium and Rennert already are embroiled in suits filed by EPA and a bankruptcy court.
Settlement talks haven't resolved the first EPA suit, which cites plant releases of dioxins and hexachlorobenzene, a manufacturing byproduct banned from use in pesticides in 1976.
A U.S. Bankruptcy Court sued Rennert and his professional advisers for selling company sold bonds without informing investors about the original EPA complaint.
The latest EPA suit alleges the plant's plumbing, wastewater ponds, landfill and ditches are fouled with PCB-laced sludge and dust. The EPA says it found PCBs were found in concentrations as high as 600 parts per million -- 12 times above a limit allowed for accidental released by manufacturers.
The world's second-largest magnesium company operates the plant in Rowley, about 65 miles west of Salt Lake City. About 400 workers sift and boil minerals from the Great Salt Lake brine for use as a metal strengthener.
Rennert, a reclusive New Yorker, bought the magnesium plant from Amax in 1989 and renamed it Magnesium Corporation of America, or MagCorp.
Magcorp filed for bankruptcy in 2001, five years after raising $150 million in corporate bonds. It was picked up by Rennert's holding company at a bankruptcy auction and renamed U.S. Magnesium in 2002.
U.S. Magnesium is defending itself by arguing its operations are exempt from the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which requires companies to monitor certain kinds of hazardous waste.
"We don't think there's a lot of merit to their allegations," said Tom Tripp, U.S. Magnesium's technical services manager.
A hearing on EPA's original suit is scheduled for May 20 before U.S. District Judge Dee Benson. The new lawsuit hasn't been assigned a judge yet.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
