Can DuPont spinoff Chemours afford pollution fixes? (Update)

(SEC has approved DuPont's Chemours spin-off. More in my column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, here.) Earlier: Pollution-related liabilities from DuPont Co. operations in West Virginia, New Jersey and other states, may require more money than the assets DuPont has set aside to cover possible costs as these "performance-chemical" manufacturing facilities are spun off into a new company, Chemours, according to this letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission by Keep Your Promises DuPont, a community activist group that monitors DuPont contamination and remediation in Parkersburg, W. Va.

Keep Your Promises focuses particularly on toxic chemicals left over from the production of Teflon, DuPont's flexible, tough material, at plants in the Ohio River Valley near Parkersburg. Teflon was invented at DuPont's Chambers Works in Salem County, a more-than-two-square-mile complex at the east end of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, with long-documented air, ground and water contamination issues, see EPA summary here. EPA fine for Deepwater air pollution last winter here. DuPont's Edge Moor, Delaware, titanium-dioxide plant is among the other local facilities moving to Chemours. EPA summary report for Edge Moor here. 

SEC filing on Chemours spinoff here: wherein DuPont ackowledges but does not detail environmental liabilities, and references additional info in other DuPont filings. -- Asked about Keep Your Promise's concerns, and whether Chemours will have the money to fix damages from former DuPont sites, DuPont spokesman Daniel A. Turner sent me this statement: "DuPont and Chemours remain committed to continuing to fulfill all of their environmental and legal obligations in accordance with existing local, state and federal regulatory guidelines."

DuPont has identified some costs for future clean-up work, but "we really think that is severely underestimating it," Keep Your Promises spokeswoman Maggie Flanigan told me. DuPont hopes to raise $4 billion from the spinoff and send the money to its shareholders as a dividend.