Is your water system affected by perchlorate contamination?
Perchlorate, a toxic chemical that disrupts hormonal functions and poses significant risks to children, has been detected in many water systems. California has been a leader in addressing this contaminant, setting early notification levels in 1997 and establishing an enforceable maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 6 ppb in 2007. Recent efforts, including lowering detection limits to 1 ppb in 2024, demonstrate California’s continued commitment to increasing the momentum towards regulations for the contaminant. Furthermore, a recent court ruling has mandated that EPA must set a MCL for perchlorate in drinking water.
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Recent Success Stories
Through our work, we’ve helped our clients recover perchlorate contamination clean-up costs. We believe that our work shows our commitment to ensuring that the responsible parties—not local ratepayers—bear the costs of water cleanup.
$30 million for the City of Pomona
Secured to cover the costs of perchlorate contamination, ensuring that the cleanup burden wasn’t passed on to taxpayers.
$9.5 million for the City of Lindsay
A settlement to fully cover the costs of removing perchlorate from their drinking water supply.
These victories, and many others, highlight how we help communities recover from the devastating impacts of water contamination while holding the polluters accountable.
Read our success storiesSince 2003, SL Environmental Law Group has been solely focused on water contamination litigation for various contaminants and has helped hundreds of clients, resulting in over $1.2 billion recovered in settlements and trials.
What is perchlorate, and why is it dangerous?
Perchlorate is a chemical often used in rocket fuel, explosives, and can be found as an impurity in fertilizer. When it contaminates water supplies, it interferes with thyroid function, which is critical for proper growth and development, especially in children. California has made great strides in regulating the contaminant, but many water providers and businesses affected by perchlorate still struggle to afford the costly treatment required to make their water safe.
Benefit from our perchlorate litigation experience
At SL Environmental, we have spent the past 15 years helping clients affected by perchlorate contamination recover clean-up costs. Through our work we have developed a deep understanding of the historic agricultural practices and hydrogeology that resulted in the contamination of groundwater with perchlorate. This knowledge, combined with our 20+ years of experience with water contamination litigation, allows us to provide clients with support and guidance to navigate the cost recovery process.
How we can help
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Collaborative strategy
We do the heavy lifting
No upfront costs
We provide our services on a contingency fee basis. This allows water systems to retain us without any upfront or ongoing fees or litigation costs.
Unmatched water litigation experience
We have 20+ years of experience, exclusively representing water suppliers in contamination cases, including 1,2,3-TCP, MTBE, p-CBSA, PCE, PCBs, and PFAS. The polluters we aim to hold accountable know that we are highly experienced in our field.
Less work for your organization
Our water litigation experience in TCP cases allows us to be time efficient, both preparing for and during the lawsuit.
Recover costs while protecting your community
We go after the big corporations that manufactured the contaminants, protecting both ratepayers and local communities.
Pomona has achieved its goal which is to make sure that the citizens of our City will not have to pay the cost of cleaning up a mess created by a large foreign corporation doing business in our city. This is not only a win for our community, but it is a win for all communities because it tells big corporations who are polluting our water and threatening the health of our citizens that they will be brought to justice. The City is grateful to our attorneys at SL Environmental Law Group whose expertise and perseverance were critical to the successful outcome of our case.