Bloomberg News (10/11, Gullo, 1M) reports that AVX Corp., “a maker of electronic components, agreed to pay $366 million to settle a U.S. lawsuit over continuing cleanup of a Massachusetts harbor contaminated 40 years ago with hazardous waste by the company’s predecessor.” Bloomberg continues, “The cleanup of the New Bedford harbor Superfund site in New Bedford, Massachusetts, will be complete in five to seven years as a result of the settlement, the U.S. Justice Department said in an e-mail. AVX’s corporate predecessor, Aerovox Corp., operated a plant on the shore of the harbor from the 1940s to the 1970s that discharged hazardous substances, including polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, the agency said. In 1983 the site was included in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Program, which cleans up the U.S.’s most hazardous toxic sites.”

        The Boston Business Journal (10/11, Grillo, Subscription Publication) reports, “The settlement with the South Carolina-based company clears the way for expedited cleanup of the harbor including dredging polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-contaminated sediment and disposing it at a licensed facility. If approved by the court, this will be the largest single-site cash settlement in the history of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund program. AVX’s agreement will provide most of the estimated funding needed to allow EPA to complete the cleanup remedy for the New Bedford Harbor Superfund Site by 2019.”