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Environmental Groups Criticize State's River Pollution Deal

Margaret Sun
/
90.5 WESA
PPG Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh.

PPG Industries Inc. is agreeing to pay $1.2 million and treat polluted water seeping into the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania from a long-closed waste site, although environmental organizations called it a "slap on the wrist."

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection and PPG signed the agreement Tuesday.

The department says that, from the 1920s until 1970, PPG used an approximately 70-acre site near its Ford City glass manufacturing plant to dump toxic waste that continues to pollute runoff and groundwater.

PPG says the agreement demonstrates its commitment to address conditions at the property.

PennEnvironment and the Sierra Club sued PPG in 2012, yielding a federal judge's ruling last year that PPG is liable for the contamination. The groups say they'll continue with their lawsuit because the agreement doesn't require PPG to clean up the site.

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