Maine DEP sues company over cleanup of contaminated Orrington site
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection is suing the owners of a site in Orrington, alleging they’ve failed to properly clean up contamination.
The Maine DEP announced the legal action in Penobscot Superior Court against Mallinckrodt US LLC on Tuesday. The department is seeking injunctive relief and civil penalties.
The company operated a chemical manufacturing plant along the Penobscot River in Orrington between 1967 and 1982. While under Mallinckrodt’s control, the site discharged between six and 12 metric tons of mercury in the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to one court-ordered study.
The plant was eventually shut down in 2000 when then-owner HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. declared bankruptcy.
Mallinckrodt was deemed responsible for cleaning up the river and surrounding area by a federal judge in 2015. In 2022, a judge ordered the company to pay at least $187 million to clean up the region.
“While progress has been made, it began to slow down as early as 2019 when Mallinckrodt began the first of several attempts to seek relief from the (DEP) requirements,” the Maine DEP said in its announcement Tuesday. “Since 2023, Mallinckrodt has ceased any meaningful progress toward remediation at the site.”
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In March 2025, the Maine DEP issued Mallinckrodt a notice of violation, saying it has done an insufficient job of removing the hazardous materials and has attempted to dodge its legal responsibilities surrounding the cleanup. Another was issued in October.
The department had previously ordered that all soil with mercury concentrations above 2.2 parts per million must be removed from the plant. Testing completed in 2023 found some soil surrounding the plant to contain as much as 12.8 ppm of mercury, according to the notices of violation.
A spokesperson for Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals said in 2025 that “since 2013, the Orrington, ME, site and the ‘Mallinckrodt US LLC’ entity have been owned by Covidien, subsequently acquired by Medtronic.”
“Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals became an independent company via a spinoff from Covidien in 2013. Given that, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals is not responsible for this site or the Notice of Violation recently issued by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection,” they said in a written statement.
According to its website, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals recently merged with another company, Endo, and then split its operations into two new companies, Keenova and Par Health.
A Keenova spokesperson on Wednesday morning reiterated the Mallinckrodt statement from last year.
A spokesperson Par Health did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit Tuesday evening.
This story was updated on Aug. 26 to add a response from a Keenova spokesperson.
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Tagged: maine department of environmental protection
Drew is the night reporter for the Portland Press Herald. He previously covered South Portland, Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth for the Sentry, Leader and Southern Forecaster. Though he is from Massachusetts,. More by Drew Johnson
