Disposal

Thousands of canisters of highly radioactive waste from the world's most nuclear-energized nation lie, silent and deadly, beneath this jutting tip of Normandy. Above ground, cows graze and Atlantic waves crash into heather-covered hills. The spent fuel, vitrified into blocks of black glass that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, is in "interim storage."

Colorado health officials ordered the Defense Department to speed up its destruction of mustard gas at a chemical weapons depot, saying the military had ignored requests to do so. Health department spokeswoman Jeannine Natterman said Wednesday's order affecting the Pueblo Chemical Weapons Depot was mandatory. About 2,600 tons of the gas are stored at the site.

Ending a five-year legal skirmish that pitted Huntington Beach against its police union, city officials announced Tuesday that the union and other agencies would help pay to decontaminate a portion of Huntington Beach Central Park used for a quarter-century as a firing range. The Huntington Beach Police Officers Assn.'

Mounds of titanium and steel glinted in the afternoon sun, valves and pipes protruding in all directions like half-formed metal organisms. In one corner of the warehouse was a twin of the Apollo command module engine that brought Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong back from the surface of the moon nearly 40 years ago. Nearby was the second-stage motor for a Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever used in the U.S. space program.

City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo announced Tuesday that he has filed criminal charges against prominent downtown Los Angeles developer Meruelo Maddux Properties, accusing the firm of improperly removing and disposing of asbestos-tainted material from an industrial complex. Named in the 16-count complaint is the company and its president, John Charles Maddux, and project managers John Durham and John Horrigan.

A mountain of hazardous waste created by a shuttered metals recycling plant adjacent to Oxnard's Ormond Beach wetlands has been stabilized, federal regulators announced Friday as they took government officials on a rain-soaked tour of the site. Ventura County Supervisor Kathy Long and representatives of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep.

An Indonesian court today acquitted a U.S. executive and his company, Newmont Mining Corp., of dumping dangerous levels of toxins into a bay and sickening villagers. Richard Ness, 57, could have faced 10 years in jail and a $60,000 fine. The court said the waste rock from the now-defunct mine on Sulawesi island did not exceed government standards and there was "not enough evidence that people suffered from health problems."

Environmental activists won a major victory Wednesday when a judge declared that the U.S. Department of Energy continues to violate federal law in its cleanup of nuclear and chemical contamination at Boeing's Rocketdyne field laboratory near Simi Valley. U.S.

Perchlorate contaminating the Santa Clarita Valley's underground water supply is to be cleaned up under an estimated $100-million settlement of a federal lawsuit against former and present owners of a shuttered munitions and fireworks factory announced Wednesday. The suit was filed by four area water agencies in November 2000 against Whittaker Corp., Remediation Financial Inc.

The Army Corps of Engineers has removed World War I-era military munitions discovered on two Jersey Shore beaches, and officials expect the sand and surf will be ready for Memorial Day crowds. The material was dumped at sea by the military decades ago, where it sat until it was sucked off the ocean floor and onto the sand by a dredge pipe during a beach replenishment project on Long Beach Island.