Freedom Industries gets go-ahead to sell Nitro WV facility

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Freedom gets go-ahead to sell Nitro facility

Tuesday, May 13, 2014
By David Gutman, Staff writer

Unless it gets a better bid by Friday at 1 p.m., Freedom Industries will soon sell its Poca Blending facility to Lexycon LLC, a new company run by a former executive and part-owner of Freedom. ... U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald Pearson tentatively approved the sale, which would leave Lexycon entirely free from potential liability for Freedom’s Jan. 9 chemical leak into the Elk River, at a hearing Tuesday.
....

Freedom filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 17, eight days after one of its chemical storage tanks leaked a coal-cleaning chemical that contaminated the residential water supply for about 300,000 people. It has two facilities: Etowah River Terminal — the tank farm on the Elk River that leaked the chemical — and Poca Blending, a storage and mixing facility in Nitro. Etowah will be torn down once the site has been cleaned up.
....

Lexycon was founded in Florida in late March and registered to do business in West Virginia about a month ago. ... It is owned by David Carson, who for 35 years has run a chemical company called CHEM Group, now ORG CHEM Group, based in Evansville, Indiana. Carson also owns a chemical trading company called DCar LLC, which has been doing business with Freedom for the last 13 years.

Lexycon is registered in Florida at a building that used to be owned by Gary Southern, Freedom’s president. Carson’s lawyer, Christopher Smith, said that an entity he owns bought that building in the early 2000s and it is unrelated to Freedom.

[GeorgeGist]

1. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald Pearson believes in Freedumb™

Reagan appointee.