Nearly two dozen people living on Golder Avenue, West Hillmont, 81st and 83rd streets and one business filed a lawsuit Monday against Permian Basin Containers alleging the company was a “environmental disaster waiting to happen” and the recent fires there have caused them to suffer ill health effects, lose their well water and suffer property damage.
According to the lawsuit filed in Ector County District Court, the plaintiffs are also demanding potable water be delivered to their homes in the short term and in the long term “proper remediation and testing of ground water and well water.”
They also want air testing, the removal of toxic and harmful debris, the remediation of their property and their health issues to be remedied, the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit states that well water is outside TCEQ’s jurisdiction so no state agency is testing the water and those doing the testing for Ector County don’t test for dangerous chemicals.
According to the lawsuit, the containers at the site on North West County Road were improperly stacked, not labeled and stored near barrels marked as “flammable,” “danger” and “hazardous.”
The plaintiffs were told the containers were either empty or contained clean water, but that was a lie, the lawsuit alleges.
When the fire initially broke out July 23, the lawsuit alleges residents’ eyes burned and teared up and they became nauseous and began to suffer headaches. Some have experienced irritated skin, dehydration and worsened health conditions, the lawsuit stated.
“Worse yet, the chemical soup created by the fire and its aftermath was everywhere. The millions of gallons of water used to fight the fire drove a flood surge of hazardous wastewater through the surrounding neighbor,” the lawsuit stated. “An orange and black slick, more than a foot deep, rushed across property lines onto and into homes and cars, coating everything in between, eventually morphing into a ubiquitous black sludge.”
That water is now in the well water and contains “a laundry list of toxic, teratogenic and carcinogenic compounds,” the lawsuit stated.
The attorneys for the plaintiffs, Hicks Johnson PLLC of Houston and Liggett Law Group of Lubbock, are seeking more than $1 million for their clients for negligence, trespassing, nuisance and premises liability, meaning the defendants “had actual knowledge or reasonably should have known of the unreasonably dangerous condition,” the lawsuit states.
According to a news release, one plaintiff, Mark Rodriguez, said everything at their home smells of petroleum.
“We just paid off the house not even a year ago but now we’re in a contract to buy a new house because I can’t go back,” Rodriguez said.
Ruth Douthit, 69, said in the news release she and her husband, Bobby, 82, have paid nearly $8,000 to tap into the city water supply for home use and will no longer be able to build a small RV park to generate additional retirement income.
“This is my husband’s life’s work. It’s right here,” Ruth Douthit said of their property. “He planned a retirement, a really good retirement. And they came along and just blew it all to hell.”
