Amid beach closure signs and a stench of human waste, there are at least two ways to perceive Veolia, the corporation that operates a border sewage treatment plant at the center of San Diego County’s coastal pollution crisis.
From a critic’s viewpoint – as expressed in courtrooms and by industry watchdogs — the French conglomerate is an international behemoth that puts profits over the environment and public health. The company’s subsidiaries have been repeatedly sued and sanctioned by regulatory agencies over contaminated water, unlawful waste disposal and other violations.
After a 2015 sewage spill in Massachusetts, the state’s attorney general, Maura Healey, denounced the French firm, declared: “By failing to properly maintain and operate wastewater treatment facilities, companies like Veolia are not only violating the law, they are threatening public health and our invaluable coastal water resources.”
Veolia answers with a second point of view. The company says it is exactly the opposite of a polluter – an enterprise whose mission is to protect the planet and humanity from toxic and disgusting wastes.
“We are a strong and forceful corporate citizen on the side of cleaning up the world’s problems,” said Adam Lisberg, senior vice president for communications with Veolia North America. “That’s the work we do. We clean up the world’s messes, and we do it well.”
Those polar perspectives are likely to clash in San Diego courtrooms as Veolia faces at least five lawsuits over its maintenance and operation of a border wastewater plant that has been unable to prevent Tijuana sewage from flowing into the Pacific and onto local beaches.
Veolia critics and defenders seem to agree on at least one point: The corporation is the world’s largest private enterprise focusing on water, energy, wastes and transportation.
With 218,000 employees working at scores of wholly-owned subsidiaries, Veolia manages desalinization plants in Africa, disposes nuclear waste in Japan, delivers water in China, collects residential garbage in England… And, in San Diego, it gets paid to treat Tijuana crap, pee and industrial contaminants.
That last contract is the subject of lawsuits from an array of plaintiffs: Coronado Unified School District, the city of Imperial Beach, the San Diego Coastkeeper conservation group, and private citizens along the coastline from Coronado to Mexico.
The civil complaints stem from Veolia’s operation of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. Plaintiffs assert that, at least in part due to negligence by Veolia, more than 100 billion gallons of raw sewage have flowed into the ocean over the past five years. They contend more than 500 illegal discharges have sickened local residents, fouled the air, shut down beaches, sabotaged property values and damaged businesses.
“Defendants acted recklessly and with conscious disregard to human life and safety,” alleges the suit by Coronado public schools. “…This is despicable and oppressive conduct, especially considering defendants’ knowledge that plaintiffs – vulnerable, innocent and unsuspecting children – would have to suffer the consequences…”
Veolia, in turn, says it is merely a contractor operating a facility that is owned by the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), a federal agency that failed to maintain and expand the plant as Tijuana’s population and sewage production exploded.
Veolia argues it is not to blame for gravity that carries Tijuana’s wastes across the border. Or for storm events that overwhelm the treatment plant’s capacity. Or for the fact that Tijuana’s other major sewage plant was inoperative for years.
Lisberg said almost all of the raw sewage entering the ocean from the Tijuana River channel flows around the South Bay plant, not through it. In heavy rain periods, he asserted, the IBWC has instructed Veolia to close incoming collectors so the facility won’t be overwhelmed and forced to shut down entirely.
“We’re following the orders established by the plant owner,” Lisberg said. “As the operator, we’ve always done the best we could considering that IBWC did not keep up maintenance and capital investments in the past…
“The way to solve the sewage problem is to have Mexico crack down on it. To have Mexico actually treat it.”
From there, arguments devolve into a confusion of law, engineering, history and politics – issues we’ll get back to later.
So, which is it? Is Veolia a corporate white knight cleansing the world? An international bad actor? Or something in between?
Veolia’s history
As Veolia tells the story, it started in 1853 with a decree from Napoleon III authorizing the creation of a private water company in Lyon, France, known as Compagnie Generale des Eaux. Soon, the business was supplying water in other cities, from Paris to Nice.
During that period, other French companies formed to clear city streets of trash and horse manure, operate sewer systems, run trolleys and provide heat for buildings. More than a century later, in the 1980s, those divergent businesses had merged under the banner of Compagnie Generale des Eaux.
In 1998, the conglomerate was renamed Vivendi Environnement. Five years later, it took on a new brand: Veolia Environnement.
The name is derived from Aeolus, a ruler of the winds in Greek mythology. According to a Veolia filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, “It evokes the company’s fresh impetus and its commitment to the sustainable development of the planet, a key concept for the future, which means abiding by key ethical principles…”
Today, having absorbed many competitors, Veolia Environnement is the world’s largest and oldest water company, doing business in 44 countries on five continents. It provides drinking water to 111 million people and sanitation for 98 million. Its mission, as spelled out in a 2023 strategic plan, sounds like that of an environmental nonprofit: “…fighting the climate crisis, treating pollution, optimizing resources and improving quality of life.”
But Veolia also is a business, with a stock listing as VEOEY. In 2024, the company reported total revenues of $48.9 billion dollars – greater than the gross national product of countries such as Sudan and Bolivia.
The subsidiary in San Diego presumably has contributed to that sum, taking in at least $88.9 million for operating and maintaining the international wastewater treatment plant, according to contracts covering the past decade.
A mess in Michigan
In 2015, Veolia was hired as a municipal water consultant for Flint, Mich., shortly after a major change in the city’s supply system.
Despite complaints from citizens, state and local officials insisted the water was safe. But investigators ultimately determined that engineering changes had leached lead into the system, and testing verified disastrous levels of the toxic metal in consumers’ blood. Especially perilous for children, lead poisoning can lead to learning disabilities and behavioral problems.
The ensuing legal and political scandal led to several lawsuits featuring Veolia as a defendant along with the plant operator, Lockwood, Andrews and Newnam (LAN). In February, Veolia settled the last of those cases for $53 million, bringing its total payout to over $79 million. The settlement contained no admission of wrongdoing, and Veolia portrayed itself as a victim in news releases.
“For the past eight years, we have been defending our work and our reputation against baseless attacks,” the company asserted. “…The Flint water crisis was caused by government officials. It is a disgrace that nearly a decade plus since the crisis was set in motion, still no person who was actually responsible has been held accountable.”
By contrast, then Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette told reporters that Veolia and LAN had “failed miserably in their job — basically botched it, didn’t stop the water in Flint from being poisoned. They made it worse, that’s what they did.”
The litigation included a federal court finding that Veolia was involved in a bizarre propaganda campaign during the litigation.
According to an order issued last year by U.S. District Judge Judith Levy, a public relations firm was hired on behalf of Veolia to discredit an attorney representing Flint victims. Posing as journalists, PR firm employees allegedly contacted plaintiffs in the case — including a child — and tried to “stoke outrage” against the lawyer. Amid a hearing about that campaign, the judge found, the same firm arranged for a truck to drive around the federal courthouse blaring “attacks on the lawyer, quoting obscene language.”
The court order says Veolia’s parent company in France refused to provide information about those incidents. The judge filed a Bar complaint against an American attorney who represented the public relations company.
Lisberg, the Veolia vice president, declined to comment on the court findings.
A litany of problems
The dispute in Flint was not an isolated case, or a new one.
Environmental organizations, consumer watchdogs, citizen groups and media outlets have put out critical reports about Veolia for decades.
In 2013, Food and Water Watch published a critique of Veolia operations in the U.S. citing a litany of alleged problems — contract violations, boil-water edicts, lawsuits and billing issues — in more than a half-dozen cities.
A year later, the nonprofit Corporate Accountability issued a scathing evaluation of Veolia and another firm, Suez, which Veolia subsequently absorbed.
“Private water corporations like Suez and Veolia rely on political interference and misleading marketing at every level of government to expand their market in the U.S.,” concluded the authors.
Among the many international examples listed by critics:
- In 2019, the World Bank issued a bar against two Veolia entities after finding that the companies engaged in “fraudulent and collusive practices ” while competing for a project in Colombia. According to the bank, the subsidiaries acknowledged wrongdoing as part of a settlement.
- In Lithuania, the country’s energy ministry sued Veolia and another French company in 2020 seeking $240 million euros for allegedly illegal efforts to secure lease contracts for municipal heating businesses. An international arbitration court eventually ordered Veolia and another company to pay $61.5 million euros to the city of Vilnius while also transferring another 21.5 million euros worth of assets.
- In Lanzhou, China, at least four lawsuits were filed in 2015 against a Veolia water company over smelly tap water. According to the Centre for East Asian Studies, the water contained levels of the toxic solvent, benzene, in amounts 20 times higher than the national limit. The chairman of Veolia’s China subsidiary issued a public apology, acknowledging that benzene had infiltrated tap water in the city of 3.6 million.
In 2023, Global Witness reported on a “toxic landfill” in Colombia. According to the environmental organization, Veolia acquired the dump in 2019 from another company that had allowed arsenic, mercury and other contaminants to infiltrate food and water sources for a nearby community. The result, according to Global Witness: Infants began displaying “serious and novel afflictions, including cases of babies being born without a brain and dying at birth.”
Veolia purchased the landfill two years after Colombian courts ordered a cleanup – including construction of an aqueduct to safeguard the neighbors. The judicial order had not been carried out after six years, and local leaders who complained were threatened by paramilitary groups.
“Whilst there is no evidence to suggest that Veolia or its predecessor commissioned extrajudicial threats or violence, Global Witness urges Veolia to address the full range of harms suffered by the community and defenders who have spoken out against the landfill,” the report concluded.
Issues in the United States
Closer to home, Violation Tracker – a website that logs environmental sanctions against companies in the United States – lists more than $85 million in penalties levied against Veolia entities since 2000.
Among the domestic examples:
- In Plymouth, Mass., a Veolia subsidiary was sued for allegedly failing to properly maintain and operate the community’s wastewater system, allowing raw sewage to contaminate the town and Plymouth Harbor. Those spills prompted the denunciation from Healey, the attorney general. News reports and an online copy of the settlement indicate Veolia paid the city $21 million.
- In 2022, the California Department of Toxic Substance Control issued a $275,000 fine for permit violations at a Veolia transport operation in San Diego and a recycling plant in Azusa. State records list multiple infractions involving oil and solvents over a four-year period ending in 2020, including illegal storage, failure to control or report leaks and unlawful disposal.
- In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority sued Veolia in 2016, claiming lead levels escalated in tap water after the company switched to a cheaper corrosion-control chemical without regulatory approval. According to Corporate Accountability, “Veolia walked away with over $11 million from its management contracts in Pittsburgh, while local officials were left to find hundreds of millions of dollars to replace pipes.”
A corporate rebuttal
Lisberg, Veolia’s vice president, acknowledged that subsidiaries sometimes face lawsuits and regulatory sanctions. However, he suggested, that is hardly surprising for such a mammoth corporation, and it does not reflect a pattern or practice of misconduct.
“Our entire business is cleaning up problems that have been caused by other bad actors,” Lisberg said. “Every time we fall short, we try to do better. But, generally speaking, our track record is incredibly strong…
“Our whole business is ecological transformation. We aim to be a benchmark for how to do that well… Our people all over the globe are working their tails off.”
Robin Kundis Craig, a distinguished professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, agreed that an enormous worldwide brand in environmentally sensitive areas is bound to face lawsuits, public complaints and government sanctions.
The challenge, Craig said, is discerning whether such a conglomerate is a flawed corporate citizen.
In the case of Veolia, she added, events in Flint and the World Bank decision may be indicators.
“I think a dispassionate evaluation of Veolia worldwide is that it’s checkered,” said Craig, who has written about the Tijuana sewage crisis. “It’s been good at turning a profit.”
Tijuana’s sewage legacy
Just about everyone involved with the border sewage controversy agrees on three points: The volume of pollution is massive – more than 100 billion gallons in the past five years. The stew of pathogens and toxins is filthy dangerous. And the mess is hardly new.
In fact, Mexican sewage has been contaminating south San Diego County beaches since the 1930s.
Tijuana’s booming population produces the sewage and industrial wastes. And Mexico’s lack of infrastructure releases liquid miasma into the sea, where northbound currents ferry contaminants to Imperial Beach and Coronado.
In 1934, the International Boundary and Water Commission was assigned to solve the problem. As documented by The Coronado News in a 2023 report, efforts over the decades failed for myriad reasons.
Finally, in the late 1990s, the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant was touted as an ambitious solution. A primary treatment facility was completed in 1997, with secondary treatment finished in 2011. That project, including collector lines and an ocean outfall, cost $256 million, with Mexico covering less than seven percent of the total.
Infrastructure was designed to treat 25 million gallons of Tijuana wastewater per day when fully operational. But, during heavy rains, sewage, runoff and sediments overwhelm and clog the system, sending millions of gallons to sea without treatment. (Meanwhile, a Mexican wastewater plant six miles south of the border at San Antonio de los Buenos went defunct years ago, constantly spewing more raw sewage into the ocean. It purportedly was repaired this year.)
The U.S. section of the IBWC owns the South Bay facility, with Veolia Water West Operating Services Inc. as its contractor. In return for about $8.5 million annually, the company oversees the main plant, an ocean outfall and associated pumps and canyon collectors.
That responsibility includes maintenance where the cost of a repair is less than $100,000. In the past five years, according to IBWC, Veolia has been paid an additional $14.4 million to fix and replace equipment.
Contract requirements
Veolia has operated the plant from the beginning.
The most recent five-year contract, adopted in 2020, says the company “shall be responsible for complying with all governmental agencies having jurisdiction permits and requirements.”
A failure to perform could result in payment deductions – even contract termination.
For example, Veolia faces a penalty of $15,000 per month for each noncompliance with laws, permits or court orders if that failure is due to negligence or poor performance.
Another clause calls for deductions of $10,000 per month if the company does not maintain equipment to a “fully operational condition.”
Finally, the contract contains extensive requirements for Veolia to report and clean up all spills.
Lawsuits against Veolia point to those provisions in claiming that the company is at least partially to blame for massive releases of untreated Tijuana sewage.
The civil complaints
In 2018, Imperial Beach, Chula Vista and the San Diego Unified Port District sued Veolia and IBWC — alleging unlawful discharges and public endangerment. Plaintiffs said they had “beseeched the government through political, diplomatic, regulatory and administrative avenues” to stop the pollution, to no avail.
“Defendants falsely herald their past achievements while the pollution…grows more and more,” the plaintiffs added. “Defendants have utterly failed to fulfill their legal and moral mandates.”
At least four more suits filed within the past year are mass tort cases initiated on behalf of south San Diego County residents, initiated by private law firms: Singleton Schreiber LLP, the Law Offices of Stephen B. Morris, and Frantz Law Group, which also represents Coronado Unified School District.
The latter suit claims Veolia “made a conscious and deliberate choice to risk the lives and health of the children…while (company) officers, directors and managing agents all decided to pay themselves substantial salaries on the backs of American taxpayers…”
“It’s just outrageous,” attorney James Frantz said in an interview. “And they’re trying to blame Mexico? They’re the ones operating this plant.”
Knut Johnson, a lawyer representing Imperial Beach residents, said Veolia has been paid more than $100 million for operating the South Bay plant over the past decade, yet contends others are responsible for the pollution.
“Veolia happily cashes their multi-million checks every year and says, ‘We can’t do anything about it,’” he added.
Finally, a civil complaint by two nonprofits – San Diego Coastkeeper and the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation – claims Veolia and IBWC caused an “ecological disaster” through underfunding, neglect and poor management.
Their suit says ocean discharges from the South Bay plant’s outfall have violated Clean Water Act and national permits 500 times — including 130 notices for the toxic pesticide, DDT, and other extremely hazardous chemicals that are banned in the United States.
In one incident, the plaintiffs allege, levels of the enterococcus pathogen measured 45,000 times greater than the permit’s specification. Coastkeeper is seeking an injunction to stop the pollution, plus civil damages.
IBWC isn’t blaming Veolia
All of which raises key questions: If Veolia’s contract stipulates penalties for failure to maintain the plant — and for violating permits or laws – why hasn’t the IBWC sued the company? Or penalized it for alleged contract breaches?
In an email exchange, Frank Fisher, public affairs chief for the U.S. boundary commission, said litigation precludes him from commenting on whether Veolia has diligently complied with its contract.
When asked if IBWC has threatened contract cancellation or sanctioned the company for noncompliance, Fisher responded, “Nothing regarding the current contract.”
On the other hand, publicly available evidence does not indicate Veolia warned the boundary commission that its South Bay plant was failing or inadequate.
A five-year capital improvement plan prepared by the company in 2020 does not call for repairs costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead, it lists necessary work of $11.5 million, with no language suggesting that the facility faced catastrophic problems.
Lisberg, Veolia’s national spokesman, said warning communiques to IBWC would constitute “internal documents,” and it is up to the commission to release them.
Fisher, the IBWC public affairs chief, supplied one Veolia letter from Jan. 27 of this year calling for “urgent actions” to replace grit-removal equipment at the plant. He said there may be other communiques, but it would take time to locate them.
Veolia’s argument
Lisberg said the fact that IBWC has not sued or penalized his company – or canceled the contract – suggests that “criticisms in those lawsuits are not valid.”
In court, meanwhile, Veolia has countered civil complaints with a plethora of arguments. Fundamentally, attorneys contend the company “did not assist in or create the pollution, and could not reasonably have abated the pollution.”
The South Bay plant does not treat storm runoff or uncontrolled sewage flows in the Tijuana River, the defense asserts, and it has nothing to do with discharges from the broken Mexican plant just south of Tijuana. Yet those are “the most significant sources” of coastal contamination as determined by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
“Veolia is a background player caught in this political battle,” corporate lawyers declare in one motion. “…Veolia has not violated any environmental laws and, in fact, has greatly reduced the problem’s scale.”
In a separate filing, the company identified another main culprit behind pollution of the ocean, river and air along the border: “gravity.”
Tijuana is at a higher elevation than San Diego, attorneys noted, and stuff flows downhill. So, because Mexico has failed to build adequate collector and treatment systems, excremental waste winds up on beaches of south San Diego County.
Bottom line: “Veolia has no control over Mexico’s inadequate wastewater facilities.”
Finally, Veolia lawyers argue, even if the company bears some responsibility for sewage discharges, IBWC shares that blame. “…If any sewage near Imperial Beach resulted from plant operations, the USIBWC – not Veolia – controls plant operational decisions,” the company contends in a dismissal motion.
Moreover, the attorneys conclude, the federal commission has immunity from litigation, so Veolia should also be insulated because “awarding damages to plaintiffs while allowing Veolia no redress against the government would be profoundly unfair.”
The future
As litigation proceeds, IBWC is pursuing plans to spend upwards of $600 million on repairs and expansion of the South Bay infrastructure, doubling treatment capacity and reducing cross-border sewage flows by up to 90 percent.
Design work and some repairs already are underway on both sides of the border. Maria-Elena Giner, the agency’s recently replaced U.S. commissioner, touted progress during a February citizens’ forum, saying most of the funding has been secured for the SBIWTP project, and claiming Mexico has completed repairs on the facility at San Antonio de los Buenos.
However, as noted in the 2023 Coronado News series, “Promises, promises,” officials for nearly a century have devised remedies and offered similar assurances.
Meanwhile, in the barrios and business districts of Tijuana, a toilet flushes. And another. And another.
It happens about 134 times per second.
