Hi @skipowder99 ,

According to docs,  ALTER CATALOG ... DEFAULT COLLATION only affects newly created schemas, and ALTER SCHEMA ... DEFAULT COLLATION only affects newly created objects. Likewise, changing a table’s default collation only affects new STRING columns; existing columns retain their original collation until altered individually.

Make sure that your objects have expected collation. Another thing that it's worth checking is session collation.
Queries use the session collation, not the catalog or schema collation. The system session default remains UTF8_BINARY. 

So, that can cause the mismatch you experienced. Your target objects have UTF8_LCASE collation, but still queries that are loading data to those objects use  UTF8_BINARY collation.

If my answer was helpful, please consider marking it as accepted solution to the thread.