Puerto Rican Family Sues Baxter Over Contaminated Land

Landowners near a Puerto Rican plant operated by Baxter International are suing the company for $50 million, claiming the drug and device behemoth polluted groundwater with radioactive cobalt and other potentially hazardous materials.

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 31 in Puerto Rico, accuses Baxter of discharging wastewater contaminated with ethyl acetate, toluene and Cobalt-60 from a chemical laboratory on the site of a manufacturing facility in Aibonito, a small mountain town with the country’s highest elevation (2,401 feet above sea level). Baxter uses the Aibonito facility to make tubing and connectors used in the administration of intravenous fluids and medications.

The landowners, identified in the suit as Renan, Carmen and Guillermo Antonio Serracante-Gierbolini, leased the 12-acre (five hectacre) site to Baxter as warehouse space until 2005—nearly 18 years. After the company canceled the contract, the Serracantes determined the groundwater beneath the facility was contaminated, the family’s lawyer, John Nevares, told The Associated Press (AP).

“They [Baxter] were supposed to give it back to my clients in the condition they gave it to them, free of contaminants,” Nevares contended. “The Serracantes cannot do anything with this property…with those contaminants at those levels. The property is useless.”

Baxter filed documents late last month to move the case from Aibonito to the United States but a judge has not yet issued a ruling. Nonetheless, the company has denied any wrongdoing, calling the Serracantes’ allegations meritless in papers it filed with the court. “The allegations upon which plaintiffs base their meritless claims will be denied and disproved at the appropriate procedural juncture,” the company argued in its request to move the case, the AP reported.

Baxter spokeswoman Deborah Spak said the company used the Serracante’s property to store raw materials and finished products as well as to park trailers and employees’ vehicles. She claimed the lawsuit grew out of a contractual dispute that began when the company left the property. “We believe the plaintiff’s allegations are inaccurate and unfounded, and that the suit is without merit,” Spak wrote in an email to the AP.

Baxter, according to its website, entered the Puerto Rican medical market in 1958 under the name of Travenol. It opened its first plant in Carolina, on the edge of the San Juan metropolitan area. Since then, the company has grown to employ about 4,000 people in three locales: Aibonito, Guayama and Jayuya.

Three years ago, Baxter paid a $15,000 fine imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for inadequately testing irradiation equipment at the Aibonito facility. In 2004, the commission fined Baxter $44,000 for several violations at the same plant, including the failure to follow safety procedures designed to protect workers from radiation exposure, the AP reported.