San Diego's unusual deal to settle asbestos violations? Planting thousands of trees

Last month, when San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria appeared at a Logan Heights park to celebrate Arbor Day and announce a new urban forestry initiative, he spoke effusively about the many benefits of trees.

“They improve mental health. They provide shade and cooling. They help mitigate harmful carbon emissions,” the mayor said. “These are all really good things, in addition to being cool. Trees are awesome.”

What Gloria did not say at the Trees for Communities kickoff was that the program was being funded with millions of dollars in spending imposed by the county Air Pollution Control District.

San Diego city officials quietly agreed to pay almost $5 million to settle a series of asbestos-related violations related to the former Sempra Energy headquarters at 101 Ash St. and the San Diego Fire-Rescue training facility near Liberty Station.

The agreement called for the city to pay a $250,000 fine to the air-quality regulators, and to pay $4.7 million to launch a tree-planting program across its neediest neighborhoods to help mitigate the release of asbestos in and around the two city properties.

“Settlement of this matter shall not constitute an admission of liability of any kind in any administrative or judicial proceeding, nor shall evidence of the settlement be admissible in any such proceeding,” the six-page agreement states.

The deal was approved by San Diego officials in late December 2022.

Even though all but $250,000 was earmarked for new trees, the penalty far exceeds the average fines meted out by the Air Pollution Control District.

Regulators said the district typically collects about $1 million a year in fines.

According to the settlement, the city acknowledges that it was cited five times for asbestos violations — once at the training facility in early 2019, and four times at 101 Ash St. in 2019 and 2020.

But San Diego did not concede the merits of the violations. Under terms of the settlement, the alleged violations can only be evaluated if or when the city receives new, unrelated asbestos violations.

“If the district considers any of the NOVs subject to this agreement to determine an appropriate penalty for a newly alleged Notice of Violation, the city shall have the right to present any defenses or contrary proof concerning the facts of the alleged violations,” the pact states.

Air Pollution Control District records show that the city was issued an asbestos violation at the San Diego Fire-Rescue training center in 2019, weeks after NBC 7 disclosed what appeared to be major safety lapses at the Harbor Drive facility.

“We heard firefighters were being exposed to potentially deadly asbestos at the San Diego Fire Academy,” NBC 7 reported in February 2019. “Public documents we obtained confirmed those fears and even worse suggest the department waited more than 15 years to fix the problem. Even now, thousands of current and former firefighters remain at risk for serious and sometimes fatal lung disease.”

The day after the NBC 7 report, air-quality regulators inspected the San Diego Fire-Rescue facility and found numerous places where training had disturbed tiles and sealing bonds over nearly two decades, exposing cadets and others to the cancer-causing agent.

“Although the training was identified in the (news) reports to be causing damage to asbestos-containing materials, no recommendations or actions were ever taken by the city to proactively remove asbestos-containing floor tiles prior to being damaged,” the Air Pollution Control District said.

'Protecting our members'

The property between San Diego International Airport’s Terminal 2 and NTC Park across an inlet of San Diego Bay still operates as a training ground for city fire recruits and other law enforcement agencies. But cadets no longer crash through doors of the site's abandoned buildings or scramble across floors as part of their training.

The asbestos settlement did not require San Diego to fully abate the longtime training facility, which includes numerous buildings scattered across several acres. But it did require the city to comply with all legal requirements that apply to the “removal, containment, shipping, transport and disposal” of asbestos-containing material.

Over the years, city officials conducted spot abatements in places across the facility where asbestos was exposed. But they never removed all of the tiles and other material that had presented a health hazard to fire recruits and others.

Use of the facility today is restricted to classroom instruction in rooms where asbestos threats have been formally remediated.

George Duordo, president of the San Diego city firefighters union, is satisfied that his members are no longer being exposed to hazardous materials while training at the facility, now known as the Regional Public Safety Training Institute. But the IAFF Local 145 leader wishes the Air Pollution Control District had required the city to hire an industrial hygienist to monitor the site.

“We were asking for it because that’s a proactive way of protecting our members,” Duardo said. “Firefighters are very good at responding to emergencies, but they are not always trained to avoid those long-term threats that are not immediately apparent.”

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death for firefighters generally, due largely to their repeated exposure to hundreds of dangerous chemicals, vapors and other materials, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Some of these hazardous substances are byproducts of combustion or burning, such as benzene and formaldehyde,” the CDC reported . “Others come from the materials burning or in the fire debris, such as asbestos from older structures.”

Former San Diego firefighter Kurtis Bennett, who first reported the asbestos exposures at the Harbor Drive training facility to his supervisors in 2018, said the violations took place over many administrations. Some current department leaders were exposed at the site earlier in their careers, he said.

But instead of confronting the danger head-on when they learned about the health threat, the department's then-leaders prevented meaningful intervention, Bennett said.

“After I reported the issue, leadership sought at every turn to minimize, misdirect, and downplay the significance of the asbestos issue at NTC,” the now-retired firefighter said by email.

“Publicly available SDAPCD documents do not support their position, instead finding that the City of SD and SDFD knew about the asbestos hazard at NTC since 2001 and that no recommendations or actions were ever taken to address the issue proactively,” he added.

Additional fines

Like it was at the San Diego Fire-Rescue training facility, asbestos was known to be inside the city’s leased office spaces at 101 Ash St. and the nearby high-rise at 1010 Second Ave. known as the Executive Complex.

But separate lawsuits filed against San Diego accused city officials of having overlooked complaints from workers that they were wrongly exposed to the known carcinogen.

Earlier this month, a Superior Court judge dismissed the Executive Complex case just before it was scheduled to go to trial, finding the claims were better adjudicated through the state workers’ compensation system. Lawyers who represented city workers pledged to appeal.

The city is also in the process of mediating legal complaints filed by workers who say they were exposed to asbestos inside the 101 Ash St. building, which remains unsafe to occupy due to it.

The Air Pollution Control District reached a settlement with the owners of the 1010 Second Ave. property in late 2020, records show. The deal imposed a $500,000 fine but stayed $350,000 of that, meaning the violators only had to pay $150,000 to resolve the 11 separate claims.

The landlord, Tower 180 Owner LLC, and its contractors also were ordered to pay a $70,000 fine and $5,000 for investigative costs to the county Department of Environmental Health.

Last year, the Air Pollution Control District also settled asbestos violations it had issued against contractors that did work inside the 101 Ash St. office tower.

West Coast General Corp. agreed to pay $130,000 without admitting any liability, and Argus Contracting agreed to pay a $125,000 penalty under a separate settlement.

San Diego’s settlement with air-quality officials calls for the city to spend nearly $4.7 million planting trees in underserved neighborhoods over a five-year period beginning in 2023.

The agreement does not specify how many trees are to be planted.

Under the agreement, the Trees for Communities program is to focus primarily on the portside communities of Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, Sherman Heights, Grant Hill and Stockton. San Ysidro and neighborhoods in southeastern San Diego are designated as secondary and tertiary priorities.

Terms of the settlement also call on the city to file semi-annual updates with the Air Pollution Control District describing its progress on the planting program.

So far, the city’s only report — dated March 1 — indicates that just over $8,000 of the nearly $5 million designated for the project has been spent. It said three people were hired to manage the effort, but no trees had yet been planted.

A city spokesperson said the March report covered the six-month period ending Jan. 31. It did not include some 800 trees that have been planted since February and as part of the Arbor Day celebration, the spokesperson said.

The Air Pollution Control District operated as a county office for decades, but it became independent under a bill authored by Gloria when he served in the California Assembly.

As San Diego mayor, Gloria now serves on the APCD governing board .

Settlements are approved by staff, not the agency's governing board, an agency spokesperson said. Gloria had no role in approving the resolutions with the city, the agency said.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune .