After more than 14 years of litigation, the City of Lindsay announced Monday it had won $9.5 million in damages to treat a water well contaminated with perchlorate, a fertilizer ingredient sold to citrus growers in the 1940s that trickled into the groundwater supply.
“We are glad that the matter has finally been resolved,” said city manager Daymon Qualls. “This is a big win for the City of Lindsay and its residents.”
In 2010, the city filed a lawsuit against SQM North America, a subsidiary of large Chilean mining company Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile, which sold the fertilizer to American farmers starting in the 1920s. Perchlorate is a toxic chemical that interferes with the body’s uptake of iodine and is particularly harmful to children. It is banned from drinking water in California except at very low levels.
Lindsay, whose slogan is “Central California’s Citrus Center,” is surrounded by miles of citrus orchards. Many of its 13,000 residents work in the citrus industry.
Regular, state-mandated testing discovered the contamination in 2008, forcing the city to immediately shut down the well, Qualls said. Residential water supply to its more than 3,000 connections has since shifted to the city’s two other wells, which aren’t contaminated. The city also has a surface water treatment plant, as it imports water from the Friant-Kern Canal to supplement groundwater supply.
After attorney’s fees and case costs, the city will net more than $6.5 million, which Qualls said will be allocated toward the design and installation of a two-stage ion exchange treatment plant for Well 11 at an anticipated cost of about $5 million. The remainder of the settlement will be used to pay for future operation and maintenance of the plant.
“If all goes according to plan, we anticipate having the well back in service sometime in 2026,” Qualls said.
Rural San Joaquin Valley towns often deal with groundwater supplies tainted with arsenic, nitrates and 1,2,3,-Trichloropropane (1,2,3 – TCP). The City of Fresno in August reached a $230 million settlement with Shell Oil, Dow Chemical, and other major companies for TCP contamination. The companies were accused of selling fertilizer containing TCP, a carcinogen, which eventually made its way into the water table, contaminating about 30 Fresno wells.
The City of Lindsay was represented by SL Environmental Law Group, an environmental law firm that has spent the past 20 years helping municipalities and utilities recover water contamination costs.
Lindsay joined several other citrus-growing cities in the state in suing SQM North America. Even though most of its citrus orchards are long gone, the City of Pomona in Southern California won a $30.62 million settlement in 2023 to cover costs already incurred and expected over the next 30 years for treating perchlorate in its drinking water supplies.
Pomona was also represented by SL Environmental Law Group, which focuses exclusively on water contamination litigation on behalf of city and state governments, public and private water utilities, and other well owners. The firm has delivered more than $1.2 billion from corporate polluters to clients.
“SQM knew that its fertilizer would likely pollute groundwater, yet failed to take reasonable and available steps to reduce levels of perchlorate in its products,” said Ken Sansone, senior partne
r at SL Environmental Law Group. “Through this settlement, the City of Lindsay will ensure that the substantial costs of cleaning up its water resources won’t have to be borne by its citizens.”
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