After 16 years and millions of pages of litigation, some 240 Armstrong County residents who say they got cancer from former nuclear fuels plants have accepted a $27.5 million settlement from one of two companies they sued in 1994.

Atlantic Richfield Co. agreed to pay that amount to residents in and around Apollo and Parks Township, where the plants were once operated by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp.

Chief U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose signed off on the agreement on Tuesday.

Litigation continues before Judge Ambrose against Babcock & Wilcox Co., the other defendant that operated NUMEC.

ARCO owned NUMEC's stock from 1967 to 1971, when it was bought by Babcock & Wilcox, which then operated the two plants until they were shut down in 1983.

The case against the two companies involves about 240 personal injury claims, 60 wrongful death and survival claims, and 120 property damage claims arising from home values that dropped to almost nothing.

The litigation has a tangled history, including a six-year Babcock & Wilcox bankruptcy proceeding in New Orleans that was further delayed when Hurricane Katrina flooded the bankruptcy court.

Even the payments by ARCO are in litigation. In a separate Common Pleas suit, the company and Babcock & Wilcox are battling the insurance company they both use over who will ultimately have to pay damages.

Still, said Pittsburgh attorney William Caroselli, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, "ARCO will pay this award now."

If the company ultimately wins against the insurance carrier, ARCO will be reimbursed. But payments should go out to the plaintiffs within weeks.

Most of those with personal injury or wrongful death claims will receive about $100,000, although some will get more depending on the severity of their illnesses and how directly they can show a link between their cancers and their exposure to the nuclear facilities.

The first injury suits were filed in 1994 by people in Apollo who said radiation was responsible for an unusually high cancer rate in the tiny town of less than 2,000 people.

The buildings at the sites were demolished and radioactive debris removed. The cleanup at the Apollo site was finished in 1995; material at the Parks site remains buried there.

In 1998, eight of the hundreds of cases were selected for trial as "test cases" before Judge Ambrose.

The plaintiffs won a $37 million verdict that year. But in reviewing post-trial motions, the judge said she'd made some mistakes on matters of evidence and granted a new trial.

Before the trial could get rolling, though, Babcock & Wilcox went into bankruptcy in 2001. That delayed everything until 2007, when the company emerged from bankruptcy.

"We could not proceed against ARCO only," said Mr. Caroselli.

As the case proceeded, Judge Ambrose decided that rather than try the eight cases again, she would have a separate trial first on whether or not the type of radiation at the sites causes certain cancers in humans.

Discovery on that issue is continuing, with both sides lining up their scientific experts and volumes of evidence.