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• PCE vs. DBCP

• Getting the dirt on ... dirt

• Mike Pretz's last day is Thursday

• Locals weigh in on Democrats' exit exam proposal

• Boy shoots self with dad's gun, injures toe

• Regional Roundup

February 9th, 2010

• Middle College High School rated one of the best — and a bargain, to boot

• Lodi decathlon boasts top team in county

• Man who sparked counterfeit case pleads guilty

• Local businessman will visit Haiti to look for family

• Man who claimed to be Yosemite Sam pleads guilty to meth charge

• David Harmer seeks Republican congressional nod

• Lack of evidence in case against suspect in 'drug deal' stabbing

• Regional Roundup

February 8th, 2010

• Public Meetings

• Locals pick best, most memorable Super Bowl commercials

• Regional Roundup

February 6th, 2010

• The Home Depot hopes to join Costco at Reynolds Ranch

• Meet Larry, Curly and Moe

• Baboon business

• Regional Roundup

• Several Lodi venues let you watch the Super Bowl in style

• Lodi Library celebrates 100 years of serving the community

• Culinary craft

February 5th, 2010

• Kids, teachers help Haiti by collecting pennies for Learning Link

• Lodi, Galt students reach out to help Haiti earthquake survivors

• Tasered suspect claims he is Yosemite Sam

• Hours of sweat and work go into putting on crab feeds

• Things looking up for state's real estate

• Correction

• Regional Roundup

• Stray bullet strikes Lodi home; police suspect gang activity may be factor

February 4th, 2010

• Managers at Geweke Toyota answer questions about recall

• Lodi City Council votes to replace play structure at Century Park

• Lodi extends ban on pot shops for another year

• Mokelumne River triathlon set for June

• Family, friends to run half-marathon in memory of Galt family

February 3rd, 2010

• Correction

• Delta College trustees again collide over stipend committee

• Bad bugs, weeds are hot topics at Grape Day

• Lodi-area senators Dave Cox, Lois Wolk admit to gifts; Tom Berryhill case pending

• Lodi Unified School District president issues warning to speakers over cuts

• Galt City Council avoids budget cuts — for now

• New Lodi Memorial Hospital emergency room opens to the public without a hitch

• Regional Roundup

February 2nd, 2010

• Local business leaders say tourism, Costco, Home Depot may play roles in city's future

• Correction

• Former Lodian Erica Davis is first paraplegic woman to summit Kilimanjaro

• Regional Roundup

• No snow leopards, otters for Micke Grove

• McNerney leads in campaign cash

• Police: Train victim was a Lodi teen

• Big rig plows 7 cars

• Jumpers across California

The following stories have received the most reader comments during the last 7 days.

• Will terrorists be given Miranda warnings? (75)
• Lodi Unified School District president issues warning to speakers over cuts (64)
• President Obama's first year (45)
• Many reject the politics of 'no' (45)
• Islamic symbol in mosaic — what is all the fuss? (44)
• Writer comments on Neely column (42)
• The Home Depot hopes to join Costco at Reynolds Ranch (41)
• Time to shed the convenient sham of 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy (34)
• We need to conduct respectful conversations (30)
• Tasered suspect claims he is Yosemite Sam (25)

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PCE vs. DBCP

Two chemicals, two lawsuits, two different resolutions

Twenty years after chemicals dubbed TCE and PCE were found in Lodi's groundwater and soil, the large-scale cleanup is actually about to get started.

It took years of legal wrangling and millions of dollars, with much of the estimated $49 million cleanup coming from taxpayers through water rate increases.

Meanwhile, another cleanup involving another abbreviated chemical — DBCP — has been underway for years with no fanfare or drain on taxpayers' money. About once a year, when a filter needs to be replaced, several hundred thousand dollars come in from a settlement, which has now passed $7 million.

That case has faded from public memory, perhaps because it ended in success. The PCE case, in contrast, became a legal quagmire involving more than 100 parties, a high-interest investment from a Wall Street brokerage firm and 856 binders full of legal documents for one trial that never happened.

"I think when PCE came around, people thought, 'Well, this will be just like DBCP,'" said City Attorney Steve Schwabauer, who came along after the DBCP case was over and when the PCE case was already underway. "But the difference people didn't realize is that we had (legal) exposure for PCE. And there was so much more PCE than DBCP."

The DBCP matter involved a chemical called dibromochloropropane, which farmers had sprayed on their vineyards to kill bugs that ate the vines. The chemical then migrated into the water. State officials ordered it to be cleaned up, and the city in late 1991 sued its manufacturers — Dow Chemical Co., Shell Oil and Occidental Petroleum.

They reached a settlement on July 10, 1996, with the companies putting $4 million into a trust fund that would pay for the cleanup. They would also pay for ongoing maintenance, expected to last years. The next year brought in about half a million dollars, with an average of $250,000 coming in every year since, according to information provided by the city's Finance Department.

The money pays for such things as periodic replacement of carbon filters on the city's wells, Schwabauer said.

Of that money, which now totals $7.2 million but continues to add up, 25 percent has gone to the outside attorney the city had hired to help with the complicated matter.

That attorney, Sacramento-based Duane Miller, received the fee because he handled the case on contingency, meaning he was paid after the case resolved. If the case had gone badly, he wouldn't have received anything.

The PCE legal saga begins

Former Lodi City Councilman Steve Mann still remembers when state water quality officials began cracking down on the PCE contamination.

"I remember that day very clearly. The state came to the City Council meeting in early '93 and said they were going to start testing. They identified these (contamination) plumes, then came back and pointed fingers at all the folks they said were to blame," Mann said.

He recalls that Guild Cleaners, a dry cleaner located in Downtown Lodi near the largest plume of contamination, got a bill for $35,000 from the state. That was only the beginning, and other businesses were facing similar bills that were expected to add up quickly. To add to matters, the economy wasn't in the best shape then, Mann said.

"All we were trying to do was to abide by what the state wanted and to save jobs and industry," he said. "All these folks were looking at bankruptcy. And it evolved terribly from there."

The year the DBCP case settled, another outside attorney by the name of Michael C. Donovan came to town to address a pollution matter involving PCE and TCE. The state had also ordered a cleanup of those chemicals, which were used in dry cleaning. Later, other kinds of businesses, including the Lodi News-Sentinel, were included because the chemicals were used in a variety of industrial cleaning agents.

The DBCP case had gone well, so that certainly played a factor in deciding what to do with the PCE, former Councilman Phil Pennino said.

"The council wanted to protect the ratepayers, the citizens in Lodi, and we wanted to go after the insurance companies that had covered these kinds of contaminations," he said.

So the city hired Donovan, who began litigating. The process involved drafting a new city ordinance giving the city power to go after the insurance companies and make them clean up the pollution.

Unlike the DBCP matter, Donovan needed money to fund the legal work. After exhausting city funds, Lodi borrowed $16 million at high interest from Lehman Brothers (long before the investment firm collapsed during the recent economic bust). The Wall Street brokers would get a piece of the settlements, as would Donovan.

But Donovan was also billing at $450 an hour, while half a dozen of his associates billed at triple digits. That was another difference from the DBCP case.

The turning point

And, unlike the DBCP case, the insurance companies dug in their heels. In 2002, they won a significant ruling from federal Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. He said that Lodi itself could also be responsible for the pollution mess, because the city's own sewers had leaked and helped spread the chemicals into the soil and groundwater.

"That was probably the turning point for the case, when the judge said the sewers were involved," Pennino said.

That wasn't the case with DBCP, because it had slowly migrated in from the fields, not down the city-maintained sewers. Additionally, the quantities of PCE and TCE were far higher than DBCP, Schwabauer said.

By the time that judge's ruling came down, millions of dollars had been spent, and the lawsuit kept rolling along. The city's attorneys even took the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected the case.

In 2003, Damrell wrote in a ruling that the city's attorneys had produced "unnecessarily voluminous or redundant filings and imaginative ploys" that went against federal case law. On the eve of trial in January 2004, Damrell questioned in open court whether vast future legal bills would take up all the money intended for pollution cleanup.

Ultimately, the Lodi City Council fired Donovan, along with then-City Attorney Randy Hays. Schwabauer, then deputy city attorney, began filling in and the council soon named him city attorney.

The city canceled the trial, which had been expected to take up to two months and as much as $2 million in legal fees. Then the settlement process began, a complicated affair because more than 100 parties had been dragged into the case.

In retrospect

Now, 20 years after the contaminants were first detected in Lodi's groundwater, DBCP filters have been doing their work for years. How long they'll be needed is not known.

As for TCE and PCE, the legal obstacles created such a mess that the city has only now reached the point where it is taking bids for the full cleanup process, though the drinking water itself is safe.

Looking back is always easier, Pennino said. That sentiment was echoed by former Councilman Jack Sieglock, who was recently a San Joaquin County supervisor and is running for Assembly next year.

"You can play Monday morning quarterback 50 times over," he said.

Contact reporter Layla Bohm at layla@lodinews.com.