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Technology company Honeywell is suing Sunoco in federal court to claw back some of the nearly $500 million the former was ordered to pay in cleaning up Onondaga Lake over more than two decades.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, adds to another lawsuit from Honeywell against ExxonMobil over similar claims that the company was also responsible for polluting the lake and should therefore have to share the cost of cleanup.

A spokeswoman for Sunoco did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The claims alleged by Honeywell in the complaint date back almost a century to when Sunoco took ownership of a series of petroleum storage facilities in Syracuse in 1919. Sunoco owned and operated those facilities until 1993, according to the complaint.

Honeywell claimed that one of Sunoco's terminals was destroyed by “a massive explosion” in 1928, which allegedly resulted in an unknown amount of petroleum flowing into the Barge Canal on the northwest side of Syracuse. The canal connects to Onondaga Lake.

That was one of several occasions when Sunoco allegedly added to the lake's pollution, Honeywell said.

A pipeline owned by Sunoco on the southern shore of the lake leaked an indeterminate amount of gasoline in 1954, the complaint said. On another occasion about a decade later, the Syracuse Fire Department was sent to a terminal owned by Sunoco for an underground leak in the same pipeline.

The fire department was called to the terminal again in 1973 after a worker digging a new manhole for the sewer struck gas, oil and kerosene. The pipeline also leaked unknown amounts of fuel in the 1980s, with leaks also happening at the terminal, according to the complaint.

Honeywell also claimed in the lawsuit that Sunoco allowed a sludge generated at its terminals to drain into ditches or storm sewers, which discharged to waterways that led to Onondaga Lake. A barge stationed on the lake by Sunoco also leaked as much as 9,000 gallons of gasoline during one incident in 1939, according to Honeywell.

All of those events were accompanied by frequent spills and leaks at the terminals, which contaminated the soil in that area of the city, the complaint said.

Sunoco entered into a tolling agreement with Honeywell in 2009, but has since minimized its liability in polluting the lake, the complaint said. They tried to settle the claims, but so far have been unable to, Honeywell said.

Brian Israel, a partner at Arnold & Porter, represents Honeywell in both cases against Sunoco and ExxonMobil. He deferred comment to a Honeywell spokeswoman, who did not add anything beyond the complaint.

“Honeywell is seeking reimbursements from several companies that the company alleges released petroleum and hazardous substances into Onondaga Lake resulting in the contamination which has now been cleaned up,” the spokeswoman said. “These companies operated in Oil City, a former industrial area in the city of Syracuse, east of the lake.”

Honeywell is not seeking a specific amount from Sunoco in the lawsuit, only that the company “contribute their equitable share” of Honeywell's efforts to clean up Onondaga Lake, the complaint said. They also want Sunoco to be labeled as liable for their share of the pollution by the court.

Honeywell has, so far, paid close to $500 million toward the cleanup of the lake through a series of court orders. The company contributed to the contamination by leaking mercury and other hazardous chemicals into waterways and into the lake throughout the 1900s, according to the state Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Department of Justice.

The lawsuit could end quite unlike the explosion that spurred Sunoco's alleged contamination of Onondaga Lake. The legal action against ExxonMobil, filed earlier this year, was referred to mandatory mediation last month by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Peebles. That doesn't necessarily mean the case will be settled, but it gives the parties greater opportunity to come to an agreement.

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