Residents who live in San Francisco's Hunters Point area filed a $27 billion class action lawsuit against a Navy contractor hired to clean up radiation at the nearby Hunters Point Shipyard.
Tetra Tech is accused of fraud in the radiation cleanup at the superfund site.
Civil rights attorney Charles Bonner annoucned the lawsuit at a news conference on Tuesday. Dozens of families who live in the general area say they've gotten sick from the toxins at the shipyard. Now, they're blaming Tetra Tech for threats of cancer and other diseases.
"Tetra Tech whistleblowers have opened the floodgates of truth and the plaintiffs in this lawsuit will prove that they have suffered irreparable, generational harm because Hunters Point Shipyard has remained toxic with radiation," Bonner said.
Back in 2014 the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit first exposed allegations from whisleblowers that Tetra Tech botched the cleanup of the shipyard. Earlier this year the Navy found inconsistencies in Tetra Tech's soil sample data and said much of it is likely fraudulent.
Last week, Tetra Tech responded to those allegations for the first time, saying it stands by its work. A company spokesperson on Tuesday called the lawsuit "factually inaccurate and meritless."
