South Bay residents in San Diego County are suing the operators of an international water treatment plant in San Ysidro, alleging that raw sewage and other pollutants including hydrogen sulfide and DDT have been regularly discharged from the plant.
The lawsuit was filed on Nov. 15 in San Diego County Superior Court by plaintiffs who say they are at risk of headaches, nausea, gastrointestinal upset and other problems as a result of noxious, unsafe water discharges flowing from the South Bay International Water Treatment Plant.
The defendants in the lawsuit, including Veolia Water West Operating Services Inc. and Veolia Water North America-West LLC, have allegedly put the health of thousands of residents in Coronado, National City and elsewhere at risk as a result of unsafe water discharges flowing from the plant into coastal waters, according to the lawsuit.
“The harms experienced by plaintiffs stem from the defendants’ discharge – and continued discharge – of harmful pollutants, including fecal bacteria, contaminated sediment, heavy metals and toxic chemicals, such as DDT, benzidine and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), some of which are banned in the United States,” the lawsuit states.
The complaint alleges the discharges violate sections of the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) and the Clean Air Act. Plaintiffs are asking the court to award them damages based on their loss of enjoyment of property, medical expenses, general damages relating to personal injuries and emotional distress, and punitive damages.
A spokesman for Veolia North America, however, said the water pollution issues in the Tijuana-San Diego area go well beyond operations of a single treatment plant.
“San Diego’s environmental crisis is caused by unprecedented, uncontrolled flows of sewage and debris from Tijuana, and a critical lack of government funding and resources on both sides of the border to repair equipment and build additional capacity,” Adam Lisberg, the company’s senior vice president for communications, told the Southern California Record in an email. “No amount of dishonest rhetoric from opportunistic lawyers can change these facts, and we will defend ourselves against their baseless accusations.”
Veolia has done excellent work in helping to operate the water treatment plant in spite of the challenges in the border area, according to Lisberg.
“We look forward to working with our government partners to help bring about a long-term solution,” he said.
The lawsuit also acknowledges decades of inaction on addressing the water pollution issues, resulting from deferred maintenance and other “improper” actions. But plaintiffs allege that such problems were the result of the defendants multiple violations of their NPDES permit, leading to releases of pollutants into the Tijuana River and Estuary and the Pacific Ocean.
“The California Coastal Commission reported on Sept. 29, 2023, that over the past five years, more than 100 billion gallons of transboundary flows – containing untreated sewage, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, pesticides, sediment, trash and toxic chemicals – have been discharged from Mexico into Southern California through the Tijuana watershed,” the lawsuit states.
The result of the pollution comes in the form of frequently closed beaches, a degraded marine habitat, schoolchildren being kept indoors due to air pollution and harm to local businesses and tourism, according to the complaint.