NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has ordered Temple Inland, a subsidiary of International Paper, to pay $3.3 million and serve two years of probation for polluting the Pearl River in 2011 with illegal discharges from its Bogalusa paper mill that killed thousands of fish.
Equipment malfunctioned at the mill, which makes containerboard, allowing an untreated plume of a substance known as black liquor to flow into the Pearl River. Black liquor isn’t toxic, but it sucked up all the oxygen in the river as it decayed, suffocating more than 160,000 fish and more than 430,000 freshwater mussels.
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