Goodrich suit dropped
Company, Rialto in legal wrangling over perchlorate
Jason Pesick, Staff Writer
Article Launched:10/16/2007 08:09:55 PM PDT
SAN BERNARDINO - A San Bernardino County Superior Court judge has thrown out a July lawsuit by Goodrich Corp. against Rialto involving a contaminated pit that was closed 20 years ago.
The substance perchlorate, which had been used to produce explosives and fireworks for decades in the city's north end, is contaminating the local drinking water.
Perchlorate can interfere with the thyroid gland, which regulates metabolism and neurological development.
The judge threw out Goodrich's case, which sought to compel Rialto to enforce a 1987 policy requiring businessman Ken Thompson to properly close the pit on his property - known as the McLaughlin Pit.
Thompson never used perchlorate on the site.
He closed the pit - Goodrich said improperly - to operate a concrete business on the property.
Judge Brian McCarville wrote on Friday that Goodrich did not have standing to file the suit and that Goodrich's concerns could be addressed in a federal lawsuit involving dozens of parties suspected of causing contamination or suffering from the contamination.
That case could go to trial in October 2008.
By not enforcing the policy, Rialto has allowed perchlorate to leak from the pit and contaminate the water, Goodrich claims.
"Why, for example, is a public entity refusing to enforce mitigation it adopted against a private, solvent party, when enforcement would effect cleanup of a major source of contamination at almost no cost to the public?" one of Goodrich's court filings in the case reads.
"Goodrich is disappointed in the judge's ruling, and we're currently studying the ruling and evaluating our options in this matter," Goodrich spokesman Patrick Palmer said.
Goodrich officials have said they filed the suit because they believe the parties responsible for the contamination should clean it up.
Rialto and state officials have been pursuing Goodrich, saying it is responsible for some of the contamination.
Rialto and Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board officials - who are trying to prosecute suspected polluters in state hearings - said they have not yet aggressively pursued Thompson because they were focusing initially on the parties that actually used and released perchlorate into the drinking water.
Rialto has requested to name Thompson in the federal lawsuit to keep Goodrich and other parties from raising this issue again, City Attorney Bob Owen said.
The contamination could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up.
Rialto has spent at least $18 million on legal, investigative, water-treatment and cleanup costs because of the perchlorate.
Rialto officials have called Goodrich's lawsuit one of many distractions intended to exhaust the city's resources by forcing it to run up an even bigger legal tab.
Some of the polluters being pursued by the state have asked the courts to stop state hearings intended to determine if they are responsible for the contamination.
The suspected polluters, one of which is Goodrich, claim the hearings violated their due-process rights and should not move forward.
The pit is a source of the perchlorate.
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