When San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar signed on to an effort to sue the San Francisco-based maker of e-cigarettes for harming the youth of the county, she showed she wasn’t afraid of taking on a fight.
And now she’s taking that same approach with the nation’s largest private employer – teaming up with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the California Department of Toxic Substances, and 11 other district attorneys from throughout California to sue Walmart for ongoing environmental violations that are detrimental to the health and safety of the communities the stores operate in.
Verber Salazar announced the county’s position in a press conference on Monday and outlined how the company has repeatedly violated California’s environmental laws by doing things like discarding alkaline and lithium batteries, aerosol cans, toxic cleaning supplies, latex paints, and LED lightbulbs to be taken to landfills where the hazardous chemicals leech into the ground.
“The illegal dumping and disposal of hazardous materials adversely impacts every member of our community and causes irreparable harm,” said San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar. “We must hold violators, including retail conglomerates, accountable to ensure the safety and well-being of our communities.”
While individual residents commonly discard some of the items that were described in the lawsuit, Bonta explained how those individual items are less likely to be as damaging as hundreds or thousands of them that are all discarded at the same time – allowing those hazardous chemicals to concentrate and making it more likely to negatively impact the environment.
“Walmart’s own audits found that the company is dumping hazardous waste at local landfills at a rate of more than one million items each year. From there, these products may seep into the state’s drinking water as toxic pollutants or into the air as dangerous gases,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “When one person throws out a battery or half-empty hairspray bottle, we may think that it's no big deal. But when we’re talking about tens of thousands of batteries, cleaning supplies, and other hazardous waste, the impact to our environment and our communities can be huge.
“This lawsuit should serve as a warning to the state's worst offenders. We will hold you accountable. As the People’s Attorney, taking on corporate polluters and protecting public health will always be among my top priorities.”
The Arkansas-based company – which is America’s largest private employer – agreed to a $25 million settlement with the State of California in 2010 for similar charges, but inspections beginning in 2015 showed that the same practices were still being carried out by the company.
According to the release, a total of 58 inspections conducted from 2015 through 2021 across 13 counties revealed that in each store surveyed both hazardous and medical waste were present in trash compactors as was confidential customer information.
The lawsuit alleges that Walmart violated the Hazardous Waste Control Law, the Medical Waste Management Act, the Customer Protection Information Law, and the Unfair Competition Law.
To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.
