Dumps

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.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has launched a criminal investigation into possible patient dumping by a psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas, a spokesman said Tuesday. Trutanich's office is trying to determine whether Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital improperly dumped patients in Los Angeles, as alleged in an investigation by the Sacramento Bee. "If we were to be able to find patients and we could determine that the patients were sent here by Rawson-Neal, then potentially there could be laws broken in doing that," said Sandy Cooney, a spokesman for Trutanich.

When environmental activists began a survey of birth defects in this small migrant farming town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the results were alarming. Approximately 20 babies were born here during the 14 months beginning in September 2007. Three of them died; each had been born with oral deformities known as clefts. Two others born with the defect during that period are undergoing medical treatment. The 1,500 primarily Spanish-speaking residents of this impoverished enclave just off Interstate 5 want to know what is causing these health problems.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has launched a criminal probe into possible patient dumping by a psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas, a spokesman said Tuesday.  Trutanich's office is trying to determine whether Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital improperly dumped patients in Los Angeles, as alleged in an investigation by the Sacramento Bee. "If we were to be able to find patients and we could determine that the patients were sent here...

Last year, when supervisors indicated that they would vote against the proposed Weldon dump, Waste Management Inc., quickly withdrew its application for the project. Now Taconic Resources, a company whose murky relationship to Waste Management is suspicious to say the least, has suddenly emerged with an initiative designed to bypass county decision-makers and site a dump at Weldon Canyon after all. This new effort to get around county government is being fronted by the green-sounding Ventura Citizens for Environmental Solutions.

For years, regulatory agencies and the courts have prodded the city of Los Angeles toward full secondary treatment of the sewage it dumps into Santa Monica Bay. As a result, the city has a massive sewage disposal modernization program under way and will achieve full secondary treatment of its effluent by 1998. Now, the County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County are fighting the same losing battle that the city waged for so long. The districts have been seeking from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a waiver--the sort the city has worked under--to exempt about half its effluent from the secondary treatment level required by the Clean Water Act. The county districts have used a two-pronged argument in seeking partial exemption from the federal law. They claim that it would be more effective to work for source reduction--to get industry and other sewage customers to keep toxic metals and other harmful effluent material from getting into the sewage system in the first place.

I'll give real estate agents one hint: Don't make a future seller angry by sending tons of junk mail. My family has lived in the same house on the Westside since the 1930s. When we get so many solicitations to sell from one firm, we make a note in our date book never to offer the house through that firm. Garbage is garbage is garbage, particularly in Southern California where the dumps are already full. MARGARET W. ROMANI Los Angeles

Los Angeles should stop using Sunshine Canyon Landfill in June 2006 and turn to new technologies to dispose of trash, a mayoral advisory panel said Thursday. The findings by the landfill oversight committee represent the first official attempt to put a deadline on ending the city's use of the landfill near Granada Hills.

A politically well-connected company that tried for six years to come up with an acceptable way to compost the city's waste--and lobbied heavily for delays--was dumped Friday by an angry Los Angeles City Council. California Co-Composting System, under exclusive rights since 1983 to plan how to compost waste now being treated and spewed into the ocean or landfills, has repeatedly offered unacceptable plans that put the city at full risk if anything went wrong, according to City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie.

The Bush administration will submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today to build a controversial nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, the Associated Press learned. The repository would hold 77,000 tons of waste, mostly used reactor fuel, which would come from power plants across the nation. State officials question the dump's safety.

Los Angeles officials are investigating reports that Nevada's primary state psychiatric hospital bused indigent mentally ill patients with few or no resources to California cities. Spokesman Sandy Cooney said the L.A. city attorney's office was “gathering information and ... trying to determine whether what we gather warrants an investigation.” The Sacramento Bee reported last month that more than 200 Nevada psychiatric patients were given bus tickets and sent to Los Angeles County after their release from hospitals.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The city attorney Monday announced a formal investigation into allegations that Nevada's primary state psychiatric hospital had bused hundreds of indigent mentally ill patients out of state with few or no resources. The allegations of patient-dumping were brought to light by the Sacramento Bee. The paper reported that at least 36 of 1,500 patients discharged by Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas over the last five years had been sent to San Francisco on Greyhound buses.

SACRAMENTO - A key state Senate committee has blessed a compromise among bedding manufacturers, environmentalists and local governments about how best to keep about 2 million used mattresses a year from being dumped on California streets or into landfills. Still to be determined is exactly what kind of consumer fee or tax would be levied on mattress and box spring purchases, which manufacturers have estimated might be around $25. The money would create a first-in-the-nation "recovery and recycling" program that would be run by the mattress industry and overseen by California regulators.

Thirteen people were hurt Saturday when a Metrolink commuter train collided with a dump truck in Pacoima. Nine of the train's 190 passengers were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Shawn Lenske said. Four others, including the truck's driver, were treated at the scene and released. The train was headed south from Lancaster toward Union Station in downtown Los Angeles when the collision happened at 2:24 p.m., Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said.

When Susan had breast cancer, we heard a lot of lame remarks, but our favorite came from one of Susan's colleagues. She wanted, she needed, to visit Susan after the surgery, but Susan didn't feel like having visitors, and she said so. Her colleague's response? "This isn't just about you. " "It's not?" Susan wondered. "My breast cancer is not about me? It's about you?" The same theme came up again when our friend Katie had a brain aneurysm. She was in intensive care for a long time and finally got out and into a step-down unit.

A Metrolink commuter train collided with a dump truck near Pacoima, injuring more than a dozen people Saturday, authorities said. Nine of the train's 190 passengers were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Shawn Lenske said. Four others, including the truck's driver, were treated at the scene and released. The train was headed south from Lancaster toward Union Station in downtown Los Angeles when the collision happened at 2:24 p.m., Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said.

State water officials Friday gave permission to the operator of a nearly filled Antelope Valley dump to double the height of its piled garbage, a move expected to extend the facility's life span to the late 1990s. The Lancaster Landfill operated by Waste Management of California Inc., now limited to about 40 feet above the surrounding terrain, would be able to rise to about 78 feet under a new permit from the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday voted to demand that the state Department of Health Services put a stop to the dumping of low-level radioactive waste in landfills. Councilman Nate Holden, who sponsored the unanimously adopted resolution, said he was outraged to learn Friday that state officials continue to allow companies and researchers to dispose of low-level waste in landfills, despite a judge's ruling in May that seems to prohibit the dumping. "How do you circumvent a court order?"

New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano fired Scott Boras as his agent Tuesday morning. Rapper Jay-Z announced the formation of a new sports representation group, Roc Nation Sports, on the same day. In related news, Jay-Z's group already has landed a big-name client: Cano, who will be a free agent at the end of this season unless he re-signs with the Yankees before then. Roc Nation, an entertainment company that represents such acts as Rihanna, Shakira and Timbaland, is teaming with Creative Artists Agency, which already has a baseball group that says it has negotiated $100-million-plus contracts for Ryan Braun, Matt Cain, Ryan Zimmerman and Buster Posey.

This time, we dodged a bullet. Another mass shooting - the sort of bloody event that seems to happen on a weekly basis - was averted Monday when James Oliver Seevakumara chose to shoot himself before he could carry out his plot to shoot a bunch of his fellow students at the University of Central Florida. He had pulled a gun on his roommate, who hid in a bathroom and called police. When the cops arrived, they discovered a blaring fire alarm and speculated that Seevakumara had set it off in order to lure others in his dorm out of their rooms for easy targeting.