By Jim Hinch, Voice of San Diego
This story was first published by Voice of San Diego. Sign up for VOSD’s newsletters here.
Lawyers for the Sweetwater Authority water agency are demanding that former authority board member Josie Calderon-Scott retract claims she made recently to Voice of San Diego that the authority knew about elevated levels of toxic industrial chemicals in its main reservoir years before alerting the public.
But Calderon-Scott said she’s not backing down. And she challenged the authority to produce documents that she said would settle the issue.
In a May 23 letter, lawyers for the agency’s law firm, Best, Best & Krieger, demanded that Calderon-Scott retract claims she made in a May 13 Voice newsletter that the agency knew “for years it had a PFAS [chemicals] problem in its reservoir” and that “this problem existed for a long time before [the agency] notified the public.”
Those statements, the lawyers wrote, “are false and untrue, are defamatory, and create alarming confusion for residents served by the authority.”
PFAS chemicals – also known as “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment – are a class of chemicals used in a wide variety of industrial and household products. Federal authorities have targeted them as a major environmental problem because they have been shown to cause cancer and other serious health conditions in laboratory testing.
The agency lawyers also accused Calderon-Scott of appearing to share information from confidential closed-session board meetings, which the lawyers claim is against the law and could result in disciplinary action.
“We suggest you review Government Code section 54963, which sets out remedies available to the Authority resulting from breach of the obligation to maintain information received in closed session as confidential,” the lawyers wrote, quoting from a portion of California law that enables government agencies to discipline employees who disclose confidential information.
Calderon-Scott, who served on the agency’s governing board from 2016 to 2024, said she stands by her assertions. She said she did not share confidential information and is not intimidated by the letter.
“They’re trying to bully me to be afraid,” she said. “Of course I’m not going to retract [my statements] because of course it was all true.”
The dispute centers on when the authority, which supplies drinking water to much of south San Diego County, first learned there were elevated levels of toxic PFAS chemicals in Sweetwater Reservoir.
Authority officials maintain they first learned of the chemicals’ presence in the reservoir last October, when new federal guidelines mandated PFAS testing in the agency’s water supply.
Calderon-Scott said that claim is simply not true. She said earlier test results show officials knew for years there were PFAS chemicals in the reservoir. Calderon-Scott said the agency did not publicize those results because federal rules did not mandate disclosure at the time and officials wanted to avoid creating alarm or drawing legal scrutiny.
“I independently verified through conversations with people at Sweetwater Authority and looking at test results and other documents that the authority knew it had elevated levels of PFAS chemicals in the Sweetwater Reservoir since at least 2021,” Calderon-Scott said.
Calderon-Scott pointed out that in 2023, the agency joined a class-action lawsuit filed by a nationwide group of public water agencies seeking damages from chemical manufacturers whose PFAS products ended up in public drinking water supplies.
Since water agencies had to prove there were PFAS chemicals in their water supply to join the lawsuit, Calderon-Scott said the date of the suit alone shows Sweetwater officials knew at least two years ago there were PFAS chemicals in the reservoir.
“Look at the dates of the class-action lawsuit,” she said. “That in itself already shows they knew there was a PFAS problem.”
Voice asked the authority for a copy of water-quality test results submitted as part of the agency’s class-action claim. A spokesperson said the authority would not share the test results because they are protected by attorney-client privilege.
Jenny Windle, a Sweetwater Authority spokesperson, said it is Calderon-Scott who is making false statements about PFAS testing.
“The bottom line is Calderon-Scott’s assertion that the Authority knew about PFAS in the reservoir as far back as 2021 and discussed it during a board meeting is false,” Windle said in a statement.
Windle pointed out that previous annual agency water quality reports show that the agency did not test for PFAS in Sweetwater Reservoir because it was not required to. Windle said the agency has followed all federal testing guidelines and has shared results of PFAS testing with the public.
Windle said the letter sent to Calderon-Scott by agency lawyers was intended “both to remind [Calderon-Scott] of her ongoing obligations [not to disclose confidential information] and to formally request a retraction to correct the false and misleading narrative presented in [Voice of San Diego].”
Calderon-Scott said she believes the agency is trying to silence her because they do not want the public to know what she learned during her time on the governing board.
“They try to threaten me,” she said. “I’m not backing down.”
