Engineering company Veolia North America agreed to a $25 million settlement to settle a federal class action case related to its work for the city of Flint, Michigan, during the lead crisis in the ‘water from the city, the company and the plaintiffs’ lawyers announced. February 1 Veolia is the second engineering firm working for the city to settle with city residents, and the settlement comes ahead of a class-action trial scheduled to begin later this month.
The money is on top of $626 million for crisis-hit residents from an earlier settlement with Michigan and others. And this new settlement also includes additional payments of $1,500 for minors, for a total of up to $1.5 million. The settlement agreement still requires a judge’s approval, but the trial has been stayed pending approval, according to Boston-based Veolia.
Ted Leopold, a court-appointed attorney representing Flint residents in the class action, said in a statement that the settlement “is an important step forward in bringing closure to the horrific years of nightmares for the Flint community “.
Flint’s drinking water crisis began in 2014 after the city switched its water supply source to the Flint River. The city’s sewage treatment plant was not prepared to deal with the corrosive water from the rivers and the lead from the pipes leaching into the water.
Some residents sued Veolia and Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam (LAN), which had also worked for the city, accusing them of negligence and breach of care. Both companies refused to adhere to the previous agreement with the state.
Veolia has argued that it was not responsible for the crisis. The city hired the firm as a consultant after the crisis began, and the firm has maintained that it provided good recommendations to the city, but officials largely ignored them. A Veolia spokesman said in a statement that the company continues to keep its jobs in Flint.
“As the facts of the 2022 trial clearly demonstrate, the Flint water crisis was caused by government officials,” the spokesman said. “The people of Flint and everyone affected deserve justice. It’s a shame that almost a decade after the crisis began, no one who was truly responsible has been held accountable.”
In 2022, Veolia and LAN defended their work during a key trial for a separate federal case brought on behalf of some minors affected by the crisis. Jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict and the judge declared a mistrial.
LAN settled the claims against her last year. Veolia still faces a new trial in the case brought by the families of some of the affected children, who were not part of the class settlement. Veolia said in a statement that it would continue to fight the allegations made in this case.
“We have been very clear since the beginning of the Flint litigation: [Veolia] he did nothing wrong in Flint,” the company spokesman said.
An attorney representing the plaintiffs in that case did not immediately respond to inquiries.
Leopold said class action lawyers plan to pursue a case against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, calling it “the latest bad actor in this long and difficult saga.”
