Trust Overview
The Exide Environmental Response Trust was created in 2020, following the bankruptcy of Exide Technologies. Exide Technologies owned properties across the country where they manufactured lead-acid batteries, operated lead smelters, and recycled used batteries, resulting in contamination of soil and stormwater with lead dust and lead oxide and contamination of groundwater with VOCs. Sixteen environmentally distressed legacy sites - Non Performing Properties – were placed into trust across ten states and four EPA Regions. The Trustee must carefully balance the best interests of the Trust with the interests of the beneficiary agencies as well as local municipalities where the sites are located and have the greatest impact. To accomplish this, PathForward Consulting regularly interacts with EPA Regional management, state agency executive management, as well as local elected and appointed officials. As agent for the Trustee, Exide Environmental Response Corporation, PathForward is responsible for performing Environmental Actions on the sites, reporting to state and federal agency beneficiaries, and leveraging site assets to raise funds for the trust or to effectuate sales and/or liability transfers of the properties. Trust work has included:
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Design/implementation of remedial activities
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Demolition
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Decontamination
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Site investigations
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Wastewater, Stormwater, and Leachate Treatment
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Landfill management
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Groundwater pump and treat
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Groundwater monitoring and in situ treatment
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Financial management
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Vendor oversight
Accomplishments
To date the Trust has performed approximately $26MM worth of work but funding is limited and finite. A list of Trust accomplishments/successes include the following:
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Five of the original 16 properties have been sold and environmental liabilities have been successfully transferred to the new owners
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An additional two “adjacent” properties have been sold
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Demolition and decontamination of one project included the sale of approximately 6,000 tons of salvageable steel, stainless steel, and copper
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The Trust has raised over $3 million from the sale of site assets
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Property valuations and taxes were lowered for several sites, resulting in hundreds of thousands in savings
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For three sites, the Trust successfully lobbied for EPA Superfund intervention to keep vital site systems operational when Trust funds were nearing depletion