Environment Los Angeles County

They told Phyllis Lee when she and her husband bought their Montebello home in 1976 that the landfill across the street would be a golf course one day. Sixteen years later, it's still a dump, and now there is some fear it is leaking cancer-causing gas. "It's three times taller than it was when we moved here. It smelled for a long time," Lee said of the brown heap that fills up the view from her living room window.

An administrative judge for the U.S. Interior Department has rejected a legal challenge to the federal government's endorsement of a massive mining project near Santa Clarita. The decision issued Tuesday is a setback for the city of Santa Clarita and other opponents of the Transit Mixed Concrete Co. mine, which is designed to extract 78 million tons of sand and gravel from federal land in Soledad Canyon.

A group of residents sued 19 defense contractors as well as manufacturing and oil companies Thursday, alleging that for decades they allowed toxic substances to leak into the drinking water supply beneath Baldwin Park, causing cancer and other health problems. In the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, 23 people allege they were affected by contaminated ground water, and 23 others seek damages based on the deaths of nine relatives. Two plaintiffs make both claims.

Strollers, refrigerators, a Barbie jeep, sofas, a headboard, rusting paint cans, industrial waste--all this was hoisted Wednesday out of notoriously trashy Compton Creek, where a city official has accused the federal government of environmental racism. Using jail inmate crews on work detail, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department launched its first attack on the illegal dumping in the four-mile stretch of the creek that bisects Compton.

In Monrovia, voters are so opposed to government debt--and taxes--that until last summer only one city bond measure had passed since the Eisenhower era. It was quite a surprise when a special bond issue raising taxes to buy 600 acres of foothill open space was approved by voters. "I had no clue this would happen," said Stephen Miller, president and co-director of the Foothills Wildlife Conservancy, which led the effort to preserve the foothills. "I couldn't have dreamed this up." But it is real.

To the dismay of environmentalists, a crucial piece of a 30-mile-long wildlife corridor in eastern Los Angeles County has been purchased by a redevelopment agency known for its warehouses and office parks. The city of Industry's Urban Development Agency has purchased the 2,533-acre Firestone camp from the Boy Scouts of America for $16.5 million. Industry officials say they want the property, which lies in rustic Tonner Canyon two miles outside city limits near Diamond Bar, to build a reservoir.

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. has agreed to pay a record $7 million to settle a lawsuit with federal regulators who charged that the company violated clean-air laws at its offshore oil terminal near El Segundo. The settlement--the largest ever under the Clean Air Act for a single facility--involves alleged abuses of a program under which companies were allowed to scrap old cars instead of installing costly equipment to reduce emissions at their facilities.

Concerned about test results showing high levels of chromium 6 in north Los Angeles County water wells, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered officials to devise a plan to remove the contamination. The motion by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, approved unanimously, gives the Public Works Department a month to report on ways to remove chromium 6 and other chemical contaminants from the wells.

With wave-riders around the world watching, the Surfrider Foundation on Wednesday began building the first artificial surf break in North America. The El Segundo project is meant to resurrect waves that were lost in 1984 when Chevron built a large jetty that destroyed popular breaks north of El Porto.

Public concern over a proposal to clean up contaminated soil with a system that would shoot toxins into the air has prompted Burbank city officials to schedule meetings next week to answer questions about the controversial project. Two consultants hired by the city to assess the pros and cons of Lockheed Corp.'s proposed Vapor Extraction system will be at City Hall for a public forum from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a televised town hall meeting from 6 to 7 p.m.

The dry gulch has many faces. Commuters weave down it on the West's oldest freeway. Top engineers converge in its dusty draw to mount America's exploration of space. And on New Year's Day, millions of television viewers enviously admire its stadium, washed in the warm winter sunlight. Yet its overall identity is sketchy, a composite of glimpses blurred in the haze.

A significant swath of the largest wetlands on the Los Angeles County coast could be preserved under an agreement signed Wednesday by the developers of the giant Playa Vista project and a national conservation group.

Amid both applause and unhappy murmurs from a divided audience, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a city-sponsored report declaring that environmental questions can be solved at the massive Playa Vista project on the Westside. The council's approval brought the proposed development of housing, offices, stores and parkland near Marina del Rey one step closer to acquiring $135 million in city-issued bonds.

Environmentalists objected Tuesday to a city report that concludes that potential hazards, such as underground methane gas, could be safely mitigated at the proposed Playa Vista development on the Westside. Despite the protests from a standing-room-only crowd, the Los Angeles City Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee recommended the report be considered by the full council next week.

The road to old Los Angeles passes strawberry fields and nurseries and lonely oil pumps creaking in the midday sun. The pavement turns into a sandy trail wending its way to the shade under a bridge, where two teenagers are shooting arrows at carp in the tea-colored river. With plastic bags and brown scum collecting in the reeds, there is nothing pristine about this spot along the Rio Hondo.

A U.S. district judge Monday denied a request by environmentalists to stop developers from bulldozing 16.1 acres of wetlands as part of the massive and controversial Playa Vista project south of Marina del Rey. In August, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the federal permit to work on that tract did not violate environmental law. Groups opposed to the Playa Vista development Monday sought an injunction that would have forbidden bulldozing while they petitioned the U.S.

Fire is part of the natural life cycle in the mountains, one that is destructive, yet also restorative. Hillsides blackened in the fall's fires have sprung to life with pink, yellow, blue and purple blossoms. These "fire followers," a they are called, appear only after fires and have joined the usual display of wildflowers that bloom every spring. The seeds of some plants actually need the heat of fire to germinate and can remain dormant for decades before sprouting.

With the push of a button inside the control room at the Freeman Diversion Dam near Saticoy, thousands of gallons of Santa Clara River water gushes through the dam's fish ladder. In the eight years since it was built at a cost of $2 million to help save the endangered southern steelhead trout, six adult fish are known to have passed through the concrete and steel contraption.

Steve Hartman sees beauty in plants that most of us never notice. The Reseda businessman is on a mission to replace nonnative species in the Sepulveda Dam Wildlife Reserve with plants that have grown there since before the locals had a written language. Big, splashy plants produced by the horticultural hybridization machine don't mesmerize Hartman the way they do seed catalog junkies.

Nature enthusiasts and city officials this weekend will celebrate the grand opening of the long-awaited Stough Canyon Nature Center, which is being called the "crowning jewel" of the local park system. Located northwest of De Bell Municipal Golf Course, the $2.4-million center contains a 1,200-square-foot exhibit space, two classrooms, an outdoor amphitheater and a small library that officials hope will inspire the public to explore, and in turn, protect the surrounding area.