Asbestos, municipal workers and high-rise renovations: A showdown looms in a lawsuit reminiscent of 101 Ash St.

A downtown skyscraper riddled with asbestos. Hundreds of San Diego city employees are hard at work during months of renovations. A lawsuit accusing municipal authorities of knowingly exposing their staff to carcinogenic fibers.

101 Ash Street? Barely.

That litigation dates back to 2019, months before city employees were moved to the former Sempra Energy headquarters off Ash Street and then quickly evacuated due to repeated asbestos violations.

While lawsuits accusing the city of wrongfully exposing workers to asbestos inside the still-vacant 101 Ash St. tower remain pending in San Diego Superior Court, an unrelated case raising similar allegations are just weeks away from trial.

According to the lawsuit filed by dozens of city employees, San Diego officials let hundreds of employees stay on the job for months while construction crews renovated the city-leased property, known as of Executive Complex Building, or ECB.

“The City of San Diego knew the building at 1010 Second Ave. contained asbestos, but it kept more than 500 workers at their desks while approximately 40 tons of asbestos-containing materials were moved and removed ” said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Maria Severson.

“The city did not relocate its workers during the asbestos abatement process to save money and avoid the hassle of moving,” she added.

However, before the plaintiffs are heard in court, the city attorney’s office is expected to argue at a hearing next week that the case should be dismissed before trial.

San Diego attorneys say none of the plaintiffs developed symptoms as a result of alleged exposure. They also say the dispute is better resolved in the state’s workers’ compensation system rather than in civil court.

“There is no evidence that anyone at ECB was exposed to airborne asbestos,” the city’s attorneys argued in their motion for summary judgment.

“None of the plaintiff employees have any medical problems attributable to asbestos exposure and none have been or are being treated by a medical provider for asbestos exposure,” they added.

City lawyers also claimed that San Diego officials were not informed of asbestos exposures inside the building until 2018.

The 25-story tower is not owned by the city; San Diego officials leased several floors of the property to house many of its downtown employees. The building is owned by Tower 180 Owner LLC, a limited liability company that is not named in the lawsuit.

According to an application filed by the building owner’s contractor with county regulators in 2017, the project called for the removal of 5,000 square feet of asbestos-containing materials from the property between early August and late September of that year. .

The waste was to be transported to a landfill in Parker, Arizona, approved for long-term storage of hazardous materials.

In late August, a superintendent for the contractor hired to dispose of the waste said in an email that the estimated quantity of asbestos-containing material was 40 tons, enough to fill 10 roll-off shipping containers.

It also said it plans to dispose of 10 tons of lead waste.

“If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at any time,” the contractor said.

Only a fraction of the 550 workers then assigned to the 1010 Second Ave. skyscraper. joined the lawsuit, known as Cadena v. City of San Diego. The case involves 40 plaintiffs, including lead plaintiff Alina Cadena.

The Development Services investigator and her colleagues accuse city officials of looking the other way while they worked, as asbestos floated through the air like snowflakes and settled on desks, printers and everything else.

Serious health problems

Workers say the problems began a few weeks after construction began in the summer of 2017, although city officials say they didn’t become aware of the asbestos contaminations until early 2018.

Court records show a chain of emails from both rank-and-file workers and at least one high-ranking official raising concerns before work even began.

“The city’s Real Estate Department has asked me to wait and see what working conditions will be like once construction begins, which I will do,” wrote Stacey Fulhorst, then executive director of the city’s Ethics Commission. city, in a July press release. Email from 2017.

“That said, I am extremely concerned that the conditions will be unbearable and potentially dangerous,” she added. “Our staff are understandably concerned about being exposed to asbestos and other potentially harmful substances during construction.”

Forty-five minutes later, Fulhorst received a response thanking her for her note and assuring her that the city was working closely with her landlord to keep everyone safe.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Days after renovations began, other city employees began complaining of respiratory problems, according to court records. An employee sent an email in August 2017 describing symptoms experienced by his co-workers, whose names were redacted from court records.

One person “has bronchial/pulmonary issues and a deep cough,” the worker wrote. Another “has itchy/burning throat, difficulty swallowing, trouble coughing.”

Someone else is “having trouble breathing, bronchial/pulmonary issues, shortness of breath from coughing, strong cough,” the email adds. Another employee “had to take time off yesterday because her breathing was bad and she is now on an inhaler.”

In total, the employee cited eight separate co-workers exhibiting symptoms.

“The effects also make office staff tired due to the stress on their bodies it causes and making it difficult to sleep at night,” the email said.

The following month, another San Diego city employee sent an email asking for help resolving difficult conditions inside the executive complex. He included a series of photographs showing white flakes covering his workspace.

“This is the view from my cabin,” he wrote. “I can hear the crews tearing out the windows and they are all wearing respirators/protective masks because of the asbestos and other harmful chemicals released during the demolition.

“This lack of sealing could allow all these harmful materials to escape into our offices,” he added. “Can we please resolve (sic) this situation as soon as possible? »

In early 2018, midway through the project, someone reported employee concerns to the county Air Pollution Control District, the regional agency responsible for asbestos exposures.

County regulators inspected the site on Jan. 25 and 26, 2018, and quickly issued seven separate violations against the building’s owner.

According to the violations, Tower 180 Owner LLC failed to properly analyze all materials removed by contractors, failed to remove all regulated asbestos, failed to keep asbestos sufficiently moist until whether contained or collected and handled in an unsafe manner.

The owner’s team also failed to properly contain the asbestos in “clear, watertight packaging”, neglected to deposit the material in a timely manner, and caused a public nuisance by exposing the public to the asbestos , the regulators wrote.

The district “remains gravely concerned about the potential for repeated and continued public exposure to harmful asbestos debris inside and outside the building,” the county order states.

More than 500 San Diego city employees were immediately evacuated from the building and transferred to other city locations.

“Poor financial situation”

The city’s handling of the Executive Complex renovations was strikingly similar to how improvements inside the 101 Ash St. property were handled.

San Diego acquired the former Sempra Energy building in early 2017 and told the City Council the building could be occupied within six months. But construction was delayed.

In mid-2018, while the property at 1010 Second Ave. was undergoing major remediation, the Faulconer administration requested and received an additional $30 million from the City Council to complete the Ash Street improvements.

It wasn’t enough.

Work inside the building at 101 Ash St. was halted by county regulators in 2019 after a series of asbestos-related violations.

Under increasing pressure to complete repairs to the building, which was costing the city $18,000 a day to rent even though it could not be safely occupied, the Faulconer administration committed to opening 101 Ash St . before the end of the year.

In December 2019, the city hired a DJ and threw a party to welcome some 1,000 employees to the former Sempra Energy headquarters, including some who previously worked in the executive complex.

But new asbestos violations issued by San Diego County forced the closure of 101 Ash St. in January 2020. It has remained vacant since.

Aguirre & Severson, the firm representing Executive Complex employees, also represents a taxpayer who challenged the city’s acquisition of the Ash Street office tower in 2020. That case was dismissed just before trial, in a decision which the complainant appealed.

Meanwhile, the city faces other civil lawsuits filed by workers who claim they were wrongly exposed to asbestos while inside the 101 Ash St. building.

San Diego attorney Lawrence Shea, who represents many of these plaintiffs, settled one of these claims earlier this year. The rest will be referred to mediation later this year, he said.

“With the current commercial real estate depreciations happening everywhere, this building (101 Ash St.) is a very bad financial situation for the city,” Shea said.

In its motion for summary judgment, the city attorney’s office said neither the owner of the executive complex nor its contractors ever reported an asbestos release to city officials before late January 2018, when regulators published their violations.

The motion also notes that county regulators responded to complaints reported in early 2018.

“The APCD, which investigated, admits that it has no evidence that any tenant, including the city, had knowledge of an asbestos release prior to January 26, 2018,” they wrote.

The hearing is scheduled for May 14 before Judge Kenneth J. Medel. If he does not accept the request, a trial is scheduled for June 7.