Federal Judge Gives Preliminary Approval to $105 Million Atrazine Settlement For Public Water Systems

A federal judge in Southern Illinois granted preliminary approval Wednesday to a national class-action settlement over contamination of drinking water by the weed killer atrazine that will distribute $105 million to community water systems (CWS) providing drinking water to more than 52 million Americans, lead plaintiffs’ lawyer Stephen M. Tillery of Korein Tillery LLC in St. Louis announced.

After a 90-minute hearing in Benton, Ill., U.S District Judge J. Phil Gilbert of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois certified the matter as a class and immediately gave preliminary approval to the settlement with Syngenta AG—the Swiss-based multinational agrichemical company that manufactures and distributes atrazine—and Syngenta Crop Protection LLC, its U.S. subsidiary (City of Greenville v. Syngenta Crop Protection, S.D. Ill., No. 3:10-cv-00188).

Tillery filed the proposed settlement agreement between Syngenta and the CWSs with Gilbert on May 24 to end the federal suit Tillery filed in 2010. If given final approval by Gilbert in October, the settlement also would close similar state suits Tillery filed in Madison County, Ill., in 2004.

In the hearing, Tillery told Gilbert that the settlement provides financial recoveries to CWSs that have detected atrazine in their raw or finished drinking water impacting one in six Americans. Tillery said that under the terms of the settlement, CWSs that had registered the most serious atrazine contamination levels would receive proportionally higher recoveries—with hundreds of them recovering amounts between $100,000 to more than $1 million.

In a public statement, Tillery said, “The scope of this historic settlement is enormous, and its protection of the health of millions of Americans across the country is a huge benefit to the public, the environment and the taxpayers.”          

Tillery said CWSs would be notified of the proposed settlement by direct mail, publication in trade magazines, or through a special website to be set up at http://www.atrazinesettlement.com.

In the settlement, Syngenta denies any liability for contamination of drinking water by atrazine and any risk to public health from the herbicide. Syngenta attorney Michael Pope of Chicago told Gilbert in court Wednesday that the settlement “buys peace” for Syngenta and avoids similar suits over atrazine for at least 10 years. “This is a good settlement,” Pope told the judge.

Former Chief Justice Michael Wolff of the Missouri Supreme Court, now a professor of law at St. Louis University, called the settlement a remarkable achievement that would have far-reaching impact on the safety and quality of the public drinking water across the country, as well as on the environment and on environmental law.