Monsanto Fires Back Against Marin Over PCB Lawsuit

MARIN COUNTY, CA — An agricultural biotech firm targeted by Marin in a lawsuit over alleged PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) contamination is firing back.

Monsanto's parent company, Bayer corporation, said in an email to Patch that the lawsuit nine Marin municipalities and the county jointly filed is without merit.

The lawsuit aims to provide relief for the costs the jurisdictions will incur to remove the contaminants, county officials said.

The lawsuit against Monsanto and two other companies was filed Thursday in Marin County Superior Court by the county along with the cities of Belvedere, Mill Valley, Novato, San Rafael, and Sausalito, and the towns of Corte Madera, Ross, San Anselmo, and Tiburon.

Solutia, Inc., and Pharmacia LLC are listed as the two other defendants in the case.

“Monsanto believes the case is meritless as the Company voluntarily ceased its lawful manufacturing of PCBs more than 40 years ago, and never manufactured, used or disposed PCBs in the state,” a spokesperson for Bayer corporation said in a statement.

“Moreover, PCBs were previously required by governments in the state to mitigate certain fire and explosion risks. The class settlement reached by Monsanto with over 2,500 local governments has been preliminarily approved and it is not uncommon to receive a small number of opt-outs to these agreements — like these communities — especially when there is a large class.

“Where it has been determined that cleanups are necessary, federal and state authorities employ an effective system to identify dischargers and site owners and allocate clean-up responsibilities to them. Litigation of the sort brought by local governments risks undermining these efforts.”

Similar suits have been filed nationwide, with plaintiff agencies alleging that Monsanto deliberately misled the public, environmental regulators, and its own customers so it could reap massive profits from PCB sales, county officials said.

Marin and the other participating jurisdictions opted out of a proposed national class-action settlement because it failed to sufficiently cover the anticipated costs to comply with regulations and prevent further damage, Marin County Counsel Brian Washington said in a statement.

“PCBs have left a long toxic legacy,” Washington said.

“The companies responsible need to contribute to the solution so that the taxpayers do not have to carry the entire burden.”

PCBs, banned from production in the late 1970s, are known or suspected to cause a wide range of cancers including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, breast cancer, liver cancer, gallbladder cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, pancreatic cancer, and skin cancer.

They are implicated in non-cancer health problems such as cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, hepatic (liver), immune, neonatal, neurological, ocular, and reproductive harm.