U.S., State Petition Court to Revive Pollution Claim

State and federal attorneys on Thursday asked a federal judge to restore an ocean pollution claim against eight companies and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

U.S. District Judge A. Andrew Hauk dismissed the claim last week, saying it failed to detail the environmental damage allegedly done by DDT and PCB pollutants from plants owned by Montrose Chemical Corp., Westinghouse Electric Corp. and the other defendants.

He gave the plaintiffs--the federal government and the state of California--until May 28 to amend and refile the claim.

In a motion filed Thursday, federal and state attorneys argued that they already have shown sufficient basis for their claim, which centers on toxic sewage discharges off the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s. They asked Hauk to rescind his order or turn the matter over to a federal appeals court for a ruling.

Gerald George, the federal government’s lead trial attorney in the case declined to comment in detail on Thursday’s motion, saying only: “We intend to continue to pursue the litigation.”

Roger Carrick, an attorney for Simpson Paper Co., one of the defendants in the case, described the move as a sign of “frustration” on the part of the plaintiffs.

“This evidences that the government is serious in its efforts, something we’ve never doubted,” Carrick said Thursday. “But it also demonstrates they are fearful of Hauk’s order, which we consider reasonable.”

A hearing on the motion is scheduled for May 6.

At issue is a claim forming the core of a lawsuit filed June 18 against the sanitation districts and eight companies. Montrose Chemical Corp. and its four parent companies are charged with the ocean disposal of hundreds of tons of the pesticide DDT from the Montrose plant in Torrance--much of it through sewer outfalls operated by the sanitation districts.

The suit also charges Westinghouse Electric Corp., Potlatch Corp. and Simpson Paper Co. with dumping polychlorinated biphenyls--or PCBs--into the sewer system and also names the sanitation agency as a defendant.

The suit is intended to recover damages for the restoration of contaminated marine resources. According to state and federal officials, DDT and PCBs piped and dumped off the Los Angeles County coast polluted the marine food chain, contaminating fish and threatening wildlife, including the brown pelican and the peregrine falcon.

In his order, issued last Friday, Hauk let stand a claim in the suit in which state and federal agencies seek to recover the cost of cleaning up the former Montrose chemical plant, where DDT pesticide was produced.

But Hauk dismissed the lawsuit’s central claim on grounds that the state and federal government “fail adequately to apprise the Court and defendants of the nature of, and basis for” it.

He ordered the plaintiffs to specify which natural resources were harmed by the defendants and detail exactly where and when such environmental damage took place.

In Thursday’s motion, federal and state attorneys term the judge’s requests “a misstatement of law.” The requests, they say, require the plaintiffs to “fingerprint to specific releases by specific defendants the contamination that caused specific injuries to specific resources.”

All federal law requires the plaintiffs to do, the attorneys argue, is to show that pollution caused by releases of PCBs and DDT damaged marine life and that the defendants were responsible for at least some of that pollution.