A group of waste collection and landfill workers in Napa Valley is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation after they say they were exposed to toxic chemicals while cleaning up after the Glass wildfire in 2020 – and the former mayor says his warnings to leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Nancy Pelosi went unheeded for years.
The workers also claim they were retaliated against and faced racial discrimination for blowing the whistle on the politically connected Clover Flat Landfill’s potential to pollute water and air in the country’s best known wine region – where both Pelosi and Newsom have substantial vineyards.
The group is seeking $300 million in restitution from the landfill and Upper Valley Disposal Services, according to a complaint sent to California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
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“We didn’t have experience at all with these situations,” said Jose Garibay Jr., one of the complainants and a former supervisor at the landfill. “We didn’t have protocol for what happens in a fire, what happens in an emergency. We had no training whatsoever. But they did send us right after the fire to clean up the mess before officials showed up.”
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OSHA officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We were exposed to the gas methane escaping from the landfill, and leachate water,” Garibay told FOX Business.
He said he and a 15-man crew working 11-to-12-hour days had no training on the handling of hazardous material cleanup and no equipment other than N95 masks.
“We were not supposed to be out there right after the fire, and the company took advantage of that because we were not experienced,” he said.
By the time officials showed up a week later, evidence of some of the damage had been cleaned up, he said.
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Garibay, who began as a truck driver and was quickly promoted to operations supervisor, said he was ultimately fired for raising concerns about health risks and other safety issues at the landfill.
The landfill’s former owners told local media in October 2020 that the fire did not damage the facility, although the surrounding area was scorched.
However, the complainants say that is not true – and they shared an inspection report from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board that found “the site was severely impacted by the Glass Fire.”
The company’s current owner, Waste Connections Inc., purchased the landfill after the events outlined in the complaint.
However, some former members of management remain on the job, according to the complainants, including Christy Pestoni, whose family founded the collection business in the 1950s and owns a winery nearby.
Waste Connections did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and no one responded to a voice mail left for Pestoni at the landfill.
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Geoff Ellsworth, the former mayor of St. Helena, where Pelosi has a vineyard, has been warning for years that the landfill, at the top of a hill, has the potential to pollute water and agricultural land in the valley below – as well as create health issues for people breathing in air after wildfires strike.
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“There’s a machine politic thing going on here – this is the backyard of San Francisco, and people have their second homes and their wine businesses,” the self-described progressive Democrat told FOX Business. “But it doesn’t absolve them from taking responsibility for the laws in the area and the treatment of the people working here.”
Ellsworth, who said he worked at the landfill 30 years ago doing recycling, has sought help from numerous California government agencies and officials over the past three years, he said – reaching out to members of Congress, the governor’s office, state and local regulators and the former speaker, whose winery is in St. Helena.
“They blew me off,” he said. “Nobody would talk about it.”
The Pestoni winery’s events venue has hosted campaign events for some of the state and local lawmakers he reached out to, Ellsworth said – but not Pelosi or Newsom. The winery posted about two of them on its Facebook page, including a fundraiser for the county district attorney and sheriff candidates in 2017 that featured U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson.
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Two complainants who were garbage truck drivers working for the landfill, Gary and Ricky Hernandez, said they were forced to come to work during an evacuation order while the fire was raging. The two are not related. They also said they were both pressured to come to work while COVID-19 positive during the height of the pandemic.
“I’m working with COVID, over there servicing Nancy Pelosi’s house, and she’s out there getting her hair done,” Gary Hernandez told FOX Business.
Ricky Hernandez, on the other hand, had the highbrow French Laundry restaurant on his route – where Newsom infamously violated his own COVID lockdown order for an expensive lunch party with friends.
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Garibay said he was also tasked with cleaning fire damage at the “old winery” near both the landfill and St. Helena’s water supply.
The complainants and Ellsworth are calling for an investigation into the landfill’s former management as well as testing for potential toxic materials downhill from the landfill. They said they believe some laws have been violated.
“If you look at the drainage coming out of the landfill, it directly cuts through a mile of vineyards,” said Brian Lilla, a documentarian who directed a four-part investigation into the landfill called “Garbage & Greed: Trashed In Napa Valley.”
“It’s super gross,” he added.
In December, the landfill was fined $619,000 in connection with a leak in 2019 that contaminated a nearby creek, according to the Napa Valley Register.
“If the Napa Valley wine and hospitality industries knew how bad the problems were they’d look into it because the contamination, fires and toxic smoke can’t be good for the grapes, wine or the people who visit,” said Gary Hernandez, another worker involved in the complaint.
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After servicing Pelosi’s home while suffering COVID systems and driving his garbage truck up and down narrow mountain roads covered in smoke from the wildfires, he said that he does not think the lawmakers understand “how bad it gets.”
“Workers were sent by the company into evacuation and fire zones with no protective equipment,” he said. “Drivers like me weren’t even given masks. Workers didn’t know what the laws were, but the company should have.”
Fox News’ Julia Bonavita contributed to this report.