A class action has been filed against Chevron USA, Inc. on behalf of residents of northeast Washington, D.C., residents who allege that a 1989 gasoline spill damaged their property, made them ill and caused deaths, and violated federal environmental laws. The action seeks medical monitoring, and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for wrongful death, personal injury, emotional distress, loss of value of the homeowners' property, and loss of use and enjoyment.

The action alleges that a Chevron-owned service station just across the state line at 5801 Riggs Road, in Chillum, Maryland, developed leaks in its six underground storage tanks by 1986 because the tanks lacked corrosion prevention systems. In 2001, Chevron finally informed residents of the Riggs Park neighborhood that fuel had seeped under their houses, an elementary school and a church as a result of ongoing leakage and a 1989 gas spill that occurred after an auto struck a gasoline pump. The Environmental Protection Agency has found that the resulting contamination spreads more 1,600 feet, six city blocks into the plaintiffs' neighborhood, and affects more than 400 homes.

Chevron's consultants allegedly advised the company as early as 1989 that the spilled gasoline posed a threat to the adjacent residential community. Despite repeated warnings that the plume was not properly delineated, Chevron allegedly waited more than a decade before initiating any investigative work within the District of Columbia.

Three residents of one contaminated block have allegedly developed leukemia, including two fatal cases. One woman, who has a healthy 8-year-old daughter, alleges that she has had three miscarriages since moving to the Riggs Park neighborhood in 2000. Exposure to gasoline contamination has also been linked to aplastic anemia and Hodgkin's lymphoma.