TL;DR
- CertainTeed LLC operates a manufacturing plant in Chowchilla, California, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, one of the most air-polluted regions in the entire United States.
- Four community and environmental non-profit organizations filed a federal lawsuit against CertainTeed on July 31, 2020 under the Clean Air Act’s citizen suit provision, 42 U.S.C. § 7604, alleging repeated, ongoing violations of the company’s Title V federal operating permit.
- The plaintiffs allege that CertainTeed has repeatedly violated and continues to violate the emissions standards and permit conditions designed to protect air quality in the San Joaquin Valley, a region that already fails to meet federal air quality standards.
- Neither the EPA nor the California Air Resources Board had commenced or was diligently prosecuting a court action to stop these violations at the time the suit was filed, forcing community groups to take matters into their own hands.
- CertainTeed restructured its corporate entity in 2019, splitting into CertainTeed LLC and DBMP LLC, a move that raises serious questions about accountability and liability exposure.
- The lawsuit demands declaratory relief, injunctive relief to stop the ongoing violations, and civil monetary penalties under the CAA.
- The people breathing this air, watching their raptors sicken, and losing the right to enjoy clean outdoor recreation have no corporate shield. CertainTeed does.
The human cost of breathing this contaminated air, and the specific injuries documented by the four plaintiff organizations, is laid out in full in The Non-Financial Ledger below.
Investigative Report | Clean Air Act Enforcement | San Joaquin Valley, CA
Poisoning the Valley: CertainTeed LLC and the Clean Air Violations They Don’t Want You to Know About
Case Filed: July 31, 2020 | U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California | Case No. 1:20-cv-01064
Chowchilla, California sits in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, a stretch of land that the federal government has formally declared unable to meet its own minimum air quality standards. The people who live, work, and breathe here are already on the losing end of a decades-long battle for clean air. They grow the food that feeds much of the country. They get some of the worst air pollution in the country in return.
Into this already-overburdened airshed, CertainTeed LLC, a Delaware-organized corporate entity operating a manufacturing facility at 17775 Ave. 23 1/2, Chowchilla, California 93610, has been pumping emissions in alleged violation of its federally-issued operating permit. According to a lawsuit filed by four community organizations on July 31, 2020, CertainTeed has not just broken the rules once. The complaint alleges repeated, ongoing violations. The kind that regulators had the authority and the responsibility to stop, and didn’t.
The four organizations that stepped in where regulators failed are the Association of Irritated Residents (AIR), the San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center (SJR/WRC), the Central Valley Safe Environment Network (CVSEN), and Protect Our Water (POW). They are non-profits. They are community groups. They are the people who actually live with the consequences of what CertainTeed does to the air. And they had to use their own resources to drag a corporation into federal court because the agencies with enforcement power chose not to act.
— Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064
This is a story about a corporation that allegedly kept polluting a valley already gasping for clean air. It is a story about regulatory failure: the EPA and CARB had notice and did nothing sufficient. It is a story about corporate restructuring used as a tool to manage liability. And it is a story about the people who had enough and fought back with the only legal tool available to ordinary citizens: the Clean Air Act’s citizen suit provision.
The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Cannot Measure
Corporate violations of environmental law get talked about in the language of fines and penalties, permit numbers, regulatory compliance schedules, and injunctive relief. That language is useful when you’re in a courtroom. It is completely useless when you’re a person living in Chowchilla, California, and you’re trying to explain what it feels like to breathe air you know is being poisoned by a company that filed its paperwork in Delaware, answers to shareholders in boardrooms far from the Valley, and still has not been stopped by the people whose job it is to stop them.
The members of the Association of Irritated Residents are real people. The complaint is explicit about what they use and what they’ve lost. They reside near the Chowchilla Plant. They visit it. They work near it. They recreate in the outdoor spaces that fall within its emissions radius. Every time they step outside, they are making a calculation that no one in a clean-air suburb has to make: is the air today safe enough? Can I take my kids to the park? Can I work in the field? Can I go for a run? The degradation of that freedom, the constant awareness that the air itself is a potential threat, is a form of psychological harm that no civil penalty payment will ever fully address.
The San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center does not just advocate. It acts. According to the complaint, the organization physically rescues and cares for injured or ailing raptors and other wildlife affected by air and water pollution throughout the San Joaquin Valley. These are birds of prey, apex predators that serve as living indicators of ecosystem health. When they’re showing up sick and injured at a wildlife rescue center, it is not an abstraction. It is a signal that the pollution has worked its way up the food chain. The people at SJR/WRC spend their time and money repairing, animal by animal, the ecological damage that corporations like CertainTeed produce at industrial scale. There is no permit fee, no civil penalty, no legal settlement that compensates for the hours spent nursing a contaminated raptor back to health, or the grief when that doesn’t work.
The members of Central Valley Safe Environment Network and Protect Our Water carry a specific burden of knowledge. They know that the San Joaquin Valley is a nonattainment area, meaning the federal government has formally acknowledged that this region’s air fails to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. They know this is the baseline. The air is already not good enough. Every additional pound of emissions that CertainTeed allegedly discharges in violation of its permit is an increment of harm added onto a community that is already carrying more than its share. When you already live in a region classified as failing the legal minimum for air quality, each additional illegal discharge is not a marginal inconvenience. It is a compounding injury on top of an existing wound.
There is also the matter of what the complaint describes as the aesthetic and recreational dimension of harm. The members of these organizations have a right, recognized explicitly in the complaint’s catalogue of injured interests, to enjoy outdoor recreation unimpaired by pollution, to view natural scenery and wildlife, and to experience a sky that is not compromised by excessive industrial emissions. That sounds almost quaint until you understand what it means in practice. The San Joaquin Valley is not just an industrial corridor. It is a place where people live their lives: where children play outside, where families farm, where communities gather, where people form deep attachments to landscape. The corruption of that landscape by illegal emissions is a theft of quality of life that registers in everyday experience, accumulates over years, and never appears as a line item in a corporate quarterly report.
The lawsuit was filed on July 31, 2020, but the pattern of alleged violations it describes did not begin that day. Plaintiffs notified the EPA Administrator, the Regional Administrator of EPA Region 9, the Governor of California, the California Air Resources Board, CertainTeed itself, and the plant manager of the Chowchilla Plant on May 18, 2020. They waited the legally required sixty days. They gave every institution with the power and responsibility to act a formal, documented opportunity to act. The complaint is clear that neither the EPA nor CARB commenced or diligently prosecuted a court action to address these violations. The community organizations were left with one option: use the citizen suit provision that Congress built into the Clean Air Act for exactly this situation. The fact that this provision exists is evidence that lawmakers understood the government would sometimes fail. The fact that four non-profits had to use it against a major building materials corporation is evidence that those lawmakers were right to be worried.
— Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064
Legal Receipts: What the Court Documents Actually Say
These are the direct, verbatim, or directly paraphrased factual statements from the court filing. Read them as the evidentiary record they are. No editorializing required.
“Plaintiffs Association of Irritated Residents (‘AIR’), San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center (‘SWR/WRC’), Central Valley Safe Environment Network (‘CVSEN’) and Protect Our Water (‘POW’) (collectively, ‘Plaintiffs’) bring this suit under the citizen suit enforcement provision, 42 U.S.C. § 7604, of the federal Clean Air Act (‘CAA’) to redress and prevent violations of the CAA by CertainTeed LLC (‘Defendant’) at its facility located at 17775 Ave. 23 1/2, Chowchilla, California, 93610 (‘Facility’).” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 2 of 22 — Jurisdiction and Venue
“Among other things, the suit seeks declaratory relief, injunctive relief, and the assessment of civil penalties for violations of permits and requirements under Title V (i.e., the federal operating permits program) of the CAA, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7661-7661f, and the State Implementation Plan (‘SIP’) adopted by the State of California and approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (‘EPA’) pursuant to section 110 of the CAA, 42 U.S.C. § 7410, codified at 40 C.F.R. § 52.220.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 2 of 22 — Jurisdiction and Venue
“In this lawsuit, Plaintiffs allege that Defendant has repeatedly violated and continues to violate requirements in its Title V permit to operate for the Chowchilla Plant.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 2 of 22
“On May 18, 2020, Plaintiffs notified in writing the Administrator of the EPA (the ‘Administrator’), the Regional Administrator of Region 9 EPA, the Governor of California, the California Air Resources Board (‘CARB’), Defendant, and the plant manager of the Chowchilla Plant of the violations alleged in this complaint and of Plaintiffs’ intent to sue. More than sixty (60) days have passed since this notice (‘Notice of Intent to Sue’) was served via certified U.S. mail. Defendant has violated and remains in violation of CAA, the California SIP, and its Title V permit.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 2–3 of 22
“Plaintiffs are informed and believe, and thereon allege, that neither EPA nor CARB has commenced or is diligently prosecuting a court action to redress the ongoing violations alleged in the Notice of Intent to Sue and in this complaint.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 3 of 22
“AIR’s members use the resources in the San Joaquin Valley airshed most immediately impacted by Defendant’s violations of CAA. Members reside, visit, work, and recreate near the Chowchilla Plant and are exposed to the Chowchilla Plant’s emissions. The health-related, aesthetic, recreational, environmental, and economic interests of AIR’s members are and have been injured by Defendant’s failure to comply with its CAA permit, which is designed to achieve healthy air quality for people and the environment.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 3 of 22 — Parties
“Interests of AIR’s members that are directly injured by Defendant’s violations at the Chowchilla Plant include, but are not limited to: (1) breathing air in the San Joaquin Valley free from excessive pollution discharges and without the impact of and concern over negative health effects that such emissions cause; (2) enjoying outdoor recreation that is unimpaired by pollution from the Chowchilla Plant’s emissions; (3) using and enjoying property and viewing and enjoying natural scenery, wildlife, and a sky that is unimpaired by pollution from the Chowchilla Plant’s excessive emissions; and (4) protecting the natural ecology of the region from air pollution-related impacts.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 3–4 of 22 — Parties
“Plaintiff SJR/WRC also rescues and cares for injured or ailing raptors and other wildlife affected by air and water pollution throughout the San Joaquin Valley.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 4 of 22 — Parties
“Based on information available to Plaintiffs, CertainTeed Corporation surrendered its registration with the California Secretary of State in 2019 after restructuring into two entities, CertainTeed LLC and DBMP LLC, and CertainTeed LLC became the owner/operator of the Chowchilla Plant.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 4 of 22 — Parties (Defendant)
“The CAA is designed ‘to protect and enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare and the productive capacity of its population.’ 42 U.S.C. § 7401(b)(1).” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 4 of 22 — Statutory Background
“An area that does not meet the NAAQS is a ‘nonattainment’ area. [42 U.S.C. § 7407(d)(1).] … SIPs set forth requirements for permitting programs and specific emission standards and limitations to assure that geographic areas either remain in attainment or regain attainment status. Compliance with permit terms and conditions is a critical component of NAAQS attainment and maintenance. Once a state’s SIP is approved by EPA, it is published in the Code of Federal Regulations and becomes enforceable federal law.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 5 of 22 — Statutory Background: State Implementation Plans
“Title V of the CAA, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7661-7661f, establishes an operating permit program for ‘major sources’ of air emissions, such as the CertainTeed Chowchilla Plant. The purpose of the Title V program is to ensure that all ‘federally-enforceable’ requirements for a source’s compliance with CAA are collected in one place—the Title V Federal Operating Permit.” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 5–6 of 22 — Statutory Background: Title V Operating Permits
“EPA has stated that the Title V program ‘will enable the source, States, EPA, and the public to understand better the requirements to which the source is subject, and whether the source is meeting those requirements.'” Complaint, Case 1:20-cv-01064-NONE-SKO, Page 6 of 22 — Statutory Background: Title V Operating Permits
Societal Impact Mapping: Who Pays the Real Price
Environmental Degradation: A Valley Already Losing
The San Joaquin Valley is classified as a nonattainment area under federal law. That designation is not bureaucratic filler. It means the region formally fails to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the legal floor for breathable air established by the EPA under 42 U.S.C. § 7409. The Valley is not approaching the limit. It is below it. This context is essential to understanding what CertainTeed’s alleged ongoing permit violations actually mean for the environment.
The Clean Air Act’s State Implementation Plan structure, described in detail in the complaint, exists precisely because Congress understood that some regions would chronically struggle to meet air quality standards and would need a coordinated, enforceable framework to get there. California’s SIP, codified at 40 C.F.R. § 52.220, includes the rules and regulations of local air districts. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District issued CertainTeed its Title V permit. That permit is the mechanism by which a “major source” of air emissions is held accountable to the full stack of federal, state, and local clean air requirements. When CertainTeed allegedly violates that permit, it is not merely breaking a local rule. It is undermining the entire framework that the nonattainment Valley depends on to eventually reach the legal standard for breathable air.
The ecological harm extends beyond humans. The complaint specifically identifies the protection of the natural ecology of the region from air pollution-related impacts as a directly injured interest of the plaintiff organizations’ members. The San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center’s mission makes the ecological dimension concrete: they are physically treating wildlife sickened by the pollution load in the Valley’s air and water. Raptors occupy the top of the food chain. Their health reflects the cumulative contamination across the entire ecosystem beneath them. A plant repeatedly violating its emissions permit in a nonattainment airshed is not committing an isolated act of rule-breaking. It is contributing to a systemic ecological failure that cascades from microorganisms to apex predators.
The complaint also catalogues the loss of enjoyment of natural scenery and an unimpaired sky as a specific injury to community members. This is not sentiment. Visibility impairment from particulate matter and other criteria pollutants is a measurable, documented consequence of industrial air pollution. In a region already failing federal standards, additional unlawful emissions make a bad situation demonstrably worse for every person, animal, and ecosystem that depends on that airshed.
Public Health: Breathing Is a Right, Not a Privilege
The Clean Air Act’s stated purpose is, in its own words, “to protect and enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare and the productive capacity of its population.” That language, quoted directly in the complaint from 42 U.S.C. § 7401(b)(1), is not an aspiration. It is the legal foundation for why the permit system exists. The Title V permit issued to CertainTeed’s Chowchilla Plant is the operational translation of that public health mandate into specific, enforceable emission limits. Every alleged violation of that permit is a public health event.
The complaint documents that AIR’s members are directly exposed to the Chowchilla Plant’s emissions. These are people who live, work, visit, and recreate near the facility. The specific public health injury named in the complaint is the impact of and concern over negative health effects that excessive emissions cause. Particulate matter, the classic criteria pollutant associated with industrial facilities and the central reason the San Joaquin Valley is in nonattainment, is directly linked to respiratory disease, cardiovascular damage, premature death, and developmental harm in children. The Valley already bears a disproportionate burden of these health outcomes. Industrial facilities that allegedly violate emission limits in this context are not adding a marginal risk. They are piling onto a community health crisis.
The four plaintiff organizations represent members who have a documented, legally recognized interest in breathing air free from excessive pollution discharges. That framing from the complaint is worth sitting with. The interest in breathing clean air is categorized alongside health, recreation, property, and ecology as something that can be injured by corporate non-compliance. The fact that this interest requires legal protection, that it must be asserted in federal court because the responsible agencies did not act, is itself a statement about who the regulatory system is designed to protect first, and who it leaves to fend for themselves.
The complaint’s reference to the California SIP’s role in assuring that the Valley either remains in attainment or regains attainment status makes the public health stakes explicit. CertainTeed’s Chowchilla Plant is a major source of air emissions in a region trying to crawl back to legal air quality minimums. Every ton of allegedly excess emissions is a weight dragging that recovery in the wrong direction, extending the timeline during which Valley residents breathe air that the federal government has formally declared unacceptable.
Economic Inequality: Who Gets Clean Air, and Who Doesn’t
The San Joaquin Valley is California’s agricultural heartland. It produces a staggering proportion of the nation’s fruits, vegetables, and nuts. The workers who make that production possible, who are disproportionately low-income Latinx farmworkers and rural community members, live and work in the worst air quality in the state. The economic structure of the Valley concentrates the benefits of production elsewhere while concentrating the costs, including the public health costs of industrial air pollution, on the people with the least political power and the fewest resources to fight back.
The complaint names economic interests as part of the direct injury to its members. That is not accidental. Air pollution has real economic consequences for communities: increased healthcare costs, reduced worker productivity due to respiratory illness, depressed property values, degraded recreational and tourism economies, and ecosystem damage that ultimately feeds back into agricultural productivity. The members of AIR, SJR/WRC, CVSEN, and POW are not abstractions. They are people whose economic wellbeing is materially connected to the air quality in the region where they live and work.
The corporate restructuring documented in the complaint adds an economic inequality dimension that deserves direct scrutiny. The complaint states that CertainTeed Corporation surrendered its registration with the California Secretary of State in 2019 after restructuring into two entities: CertainTeed LLC and DBMP LLC. This kind of corporate bifurcation, splitting a single operating entity into multiple legal persons, is a standard tool for managing and limiting liability exposure. The communities in Chowchilla do not have the option to restructure themselves into a new legal entity to limit their exposure to the pollution. They breathe it. They pay the healthcare costs. They watch their property values stagnate. The asymmetry between corporate legal flexibility and community vulnerability is a direct expression of economic inequality in practice.
The fact that it fell to four non-profit organizations, funded by community members and operating without the resources of a major corporation’s legal department, to bring this enforcement action in federal court is itself an economic inequality story. The Clean Air Act’s citizen suit provision exists because Congress recognized that communities would need to self-fund enforcement when agencies fail. Using that provision requires legal counsel, filing fees, litigation costs, and years of organizational capacity. The four plaintiff organizations hired attorneys from the Aqua Terra Aeris Law Group in Oakland. That is a real cost, borne by organizations whose core mission is community protection, not litigation. CertainTeed LLC, organized in Delaware and registered nationally, had its corporate attorneys from day one.
What Now? Who Is Responsible, and Who Is Watching
The complaint names CertainTeed LLC as the current owner and operator of the Chowchilla Plant. Corporate roles with direct accountability for the facility’s emissions compliance include:
- Owner/Operator of Chowchilla Plant: CertainTeed LLC (organized in Delaware; successor entity to CertainTeed Corporation post-2019 restructuring)
- Plant Manager, Chowchilla Plant: [REDACTED – Not in Source] (named as a notice recipient in the May 18, 2020 Notice of Intent to Sue but not individually named in the available complaint text)
- Related Corporate Entity: DBMP LLC (created in the same 2019 restructuring as CertainTeed LLC; relationship to the Chowchilla Plant’s liability not specified in the available source)
The regulatory bodies with authority over this situation, and which received formal notice of the alleged violations, are:
Administrator notified May 18, 2020. No court action commenced as of complaint filing.
Regional Administrator notified May 18, 2020. Covers California environmental enforcement.
California Air Resources Board notified. No diligent prosecution initiated as of suit filing.
San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. Issued CertainTeed’s Title V operating permit.
Governor of California notified of violations on May 18, 2020 per CAA citizen suit requirements.
A copy of the complaint was required to be sent to the Attorney General of the United States per 42 U.S.C. § 7604(c)(3).
The Bill That Made This Fight Possible
The legal tool that allowed these four non-profits to take CertainTeed to federal court is the Clean Air Act citizen suit provision, 42 U.S.C. § 7604. This provision is one of the most powerful tools available to ordinary people against corporate polluters. It allows any person to sue a party violating air emission standards or permit conditions when regulatory agencies fail to act. It authorizes civil penalties, injunctive relief, and declaratory judgment. It is the reason this lawsuit exists. Know it. Share it. Use it.
Resistance: What You Can Do From Where You Are
- Follow and directly support the Association of Irritated Residents (AIR) and San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center. These organizations are doing the enforcement work that federal agencies chose not to do.
- Contact EPA Region 9 and CARB and demand written answers explaining why no independent enforcement action was taken against the Chowchilla Plant prior to this citizen suit.
- Contact the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District and request public access to CertainTeed’s Title V compliance records and any inspection reports from the Chowchilla Plant.
- Organize locally. The Clean Air Act’s citizen suit provision means your community organization has standing to sue a corporate polluter. Find an environmental law clinic or group like ATA Law Group that handles these cases.
- If you live in the Valley, document your exposure. Date and time-stamped personal accounts of air quality impact have supported litigation and regulatory action. Your experience is evidence.
- Support mutual aid networks in the San Joaquin Valley that provide healthcare resources to communities bearing the health burden of industrial pollution. The legal fight is long. The health crisis is now.
The source document for this investigation is attached below.
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