Vacaville can’t be held responsible for polluted tap water, court rules
A lawsuit accusing Vacaville of endangering its residents with tap water polluted with hexavalent chromium — the cancer-causing chemical made infamous in the film “Erin Brockovich” — was dismissed Friday by a federal appeals court, which said the city merely carried the water in its pipes and isn’t responsible for contamination caused by others. The city was sued in 2017 by the environmental group California River Watch, which said Vacaville had failed to inspect or clean up the water it had piped in from wells near a former wood-processing plant whose owners had dumped the chemical into the ground for many years.
Related article:
- Courthouse News Service: Ninth Circuit reverses itself, upholds dismissal of lawsuit over tainted water