Modesto wins $4 million in suit to clean up contaminated site; dangerous chemical lurks
Since 1998, the city of Modesto has been involved in litigation against Dow Chemical and PPG Industries for knowingly selling tetrachloroethylene, a cancer-causing chemical also known as PCE, to dry cleaners across the city. Now, the 24-year court saga has moved forward as Modesto won $4 million in damages last week for one of the sites.
The San Francisco Superior Court also found that Dow Chemical acted with “malice” and levied $56.3 million in punitive damages on the multinational American company.
Modesto officials were pleased by the verdict.
“The city has been pursuing the case in state trial and appellate courts for 24 years and is gratified by the verdict,” Modesto spokeswoman Diana Ruiz-Del Re said.
But Ruiz-Del Re said there’s still more work to be done. In addition to the one property — the former Vogue Cleaners at 409 Seventh St., now a bar called el Cachon — there are more than 20 other sites the city plans to litigate, she said.
PCE, which has been linked to cancers and other adverse health conditions, has seeped into the soil at 23 properties across Modesto, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has reported. Those properties once were dry cleaners but now include homes, grocery stores, bars, restaurants, gyms, barbershops and more.
They include the Modesto Medical Market on McHenry Avenue, the Laundry Express on Coffee Road and UPS Century Center on Oakdale Road.
PCE can move from the soil into the air of nearby buildings through a process known as vapor intrusion. In all but three of the 23 Modesto properties, CDPH reported that there’s not enough information to know for sure if residents, gym-goers and shoppers are breathing in the chemical, but it said it is “possible” or “likely.”
In one of the locations where the city evaluated the indoor air in 2016 – the site of Holy Land Bakery, June Bug’s Bar and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers training center on Phoenix Avenue at Yosemite Boulevard – a CDPH report found that the buildings likely had “elevated” levels of PCE. But the testing was cut short “due to licensing delays and subsequent vandalism.” There was not enough information at the time to say if the chemical could be harming people’s health.
Many other locations have not been tested since 2003. CDPH recommends that Modesto test the air and soil in all of the studied locations, as well as the stores around them, which include residential areas (and swimming pools), all of Coffee Plaza and Oakdale Plaza, the In-N-Out Burger in the Wood Colony Plaza on Pelandale Avenue, as well as parts of the Walmart shopping center on McHenry Avenue. The city did not immediately respond to questions about its cleanup plans.
The Environmental Protection Agency says PCE produces “unreasonable risk of injury to human health” and can cause cancer if touched or inhaled. California began clamping down on the use of PCE in 2007. The official ban on the chemical begins Jan 1.
This story was originally published October 26, 2022 at 5:43 PM.
