The City of Seattle aims to hold Monsanto responsible for costs of PCBs contamination in its waterways and and drainage infrastructure. (photo: Flickr)
Seattle
Becomes 6th City to Sue Monsanto Over PCB Contamination
By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch
27 January 16
Seattle
joins the growing list of cities in the American West that has slapped Monsanto
with a PCB lawsuit. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, is a highly toxic
chemical that the company manufactured decades ago.
The complaint, filed on Monday
with the U.S. District Court in Seattle, alleges that Monsanto knew that the
chemicals were polluting the environment and causing harm to people and
wildlife, as Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes explained to The Seattle Times.
“When
the profit motive overtakes concern for the environment, this is the kind of
disaster that happens,” Holmes added. “I’m proud to hold Monsanto accountable.”
According
to Seattlepi.com, the suit
concerns PCB contamination in 20,000 acres that drain into the lower Duwamish,
which is a federal Superfund site (meaning it’s so
polluted that that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has to help with
cleanup). It also concerns areas that drain to the East Waterway adjacent to
Harbor Island, also a federal Superfund site.
The
lawsuit also states:
PCBs were detected in 75 percent of more than 1,000 samples
collected from catch basins and drainage lines in the Lower Duwamish drainage
area. In the East Waterway drainage areas, PCBs were detected in 82 percent of
samples collected with “in-line grabs” of sediment in drainage pipes and PCBs
were detected in 73 percent of samples collected from catch basins in street
right-of-ways.
The
city is likely seeking millions of dollars from Monsanto to pay for the
cleanup. “The ultimate cost depends on how far you go in cleanup,” Holmes told
Seattlepi.com, adding that it would be “impossible” clean up all the PCBs found
mainly in the city’s industrial zone.
Under
a consent decree issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the
Washington Department of Ecology, Seattle already needs to spend at least
$27 million to build a treatment plant to remove pollutants, including PCBs,
from stormwater.
However,
as The Seattle Times pointed out, the plant will only cover a mere 1.25 percent
of the 20,000 acres that drain to the Lower Duwamish.
Monsanto
has faced a spate of PCB contamination lawsuits over the decades and
several this year alone. In 2015, the cities of Spokane, San Diego, San Jose and Oakland also sued the company over
PCB-contaminated sites.
Before
switching to agribusiness, Monsanto was
the primary manufacturer of PCBs in the U.S. from 1935 to 1979. PCBs, which
were used to insulate electronics, was banned in 1979 by the U.S. EPA over
human health and environmental concerns.
The
chemical has been detected in waterways around the world, and can cause damage
to aquatic life, wildlife as well as human health. PCBs have been known to
negatively effect the human immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine
systems, and cause cancer.
In an
email to KUOW/EarthFix, Monsanto
spokeswoman Charla Lord said the company is reviewing the lawsuit and its
allegations but added that “Monsanto is not responsible for the costs alleged
in this matter.”
“PCBs
sold at the time were a lawful and useful product that was then incorporated by
third parties into useful products,” she wrote. “If improper disposal or other
improper uses allowed for necessary clean up costs, then these other third parties
would bear responsibility for those costs.”
It has
been reported that Monsanto allegedly knew that PCBs were toxic well before the
1979 ban but continued production of the profitable compound anyway. Think Progress reported:
In a
1970 internal memo, agrochemical giant Monsanto alerted its development
committee to a problem: Polychlorinated Biphenyls—known as PCBs—had been shown
to be a highly toxic pollutant.
PCBs—sold
under the common name Aroclor—were also huge business, raking in some $10
million in profits. Not wanting to lose all of these profits, Monsanto decided
to continue its production of Aroclor while alerting its customers to its
potentially adverse effects. Monsanto got out of the PCB business altogether in
1977—two years before the chemicals were banned by the EPA—but just because the
company no longer produces the toxic substances doesn’t mean it can forget
about them completely.
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