Hazardous Materials Disposal

Students of a Cudahy elementary school that sits atop a former landfill will be transferred to a nearby facility for several months while their school site is cleansed of contaminants, school officials announced Thursday. The plan has met with approval from most parents who long suspected that Park Avenue Elementary School posed a health hazard for teachers and children.

Site 5 is a pool of muck and goo, coated with slimy pea green algae on top and lined with heavy metals below. It is one of 18 old contamination sites that sit on wetlands and sensitive habitat scattered across the Point Mugu Navy base in Ventura County. And it is part of a bold experiment to clean up a legacy of waste dumping during the environmentally lax 1940s and 1950s.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed listing the 252-acre Casmalia Resources hazardous waste dump as a federal Superfund site. Cleanup could cost $272 million. The dump accepted about 5.5 billion pounds of acids, cyanide, pesticides, manufacturing solvents, oil waste, heavy metals and PCBs between 1972 and 1989.

Orange County water officials on Thursday announced a historic $169-million deal with the U.S. Navy and the Irvine Ranch Water District to remove ground water contaminants, including a hazardous chemical from the former El Toro Marine base that threatens local drinking water supplies. After seven years of contentious negotiations with the Navy and the U.S.

Reversing an earlier decision, the Bush administration announced Monday it is adding money to its budget to continue the cleanup of an enormous heap of uranium slag in southern Utah that has been leaking radioactive waste into the Colorado River. Officials at the Office of Management and Budget informed several congressional offices that $1.

Nevada got a boost in its fight to keep nuclear waste from being stored at Yucca Mountain when the incoming Senate majority leader put up a formidable roadblock. "I think the Yucca Mountain issue is dead," Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said after arriving in Las Vegas. "As long as we're in the majority, it's dead." Since 1987, Yucca Mountain has been the only site studied to become the graveyard for 77,000 tons of the nation's spent nuclear fuel and high-level research waste.

In a surprise announcement that sent a large crowd into a cheering frenzy, school officials announced Wednesday that the contaminated soil of a Cudahy elementary school will be cleaned up. The announcement was made at an evening meeting at Park Avenue Elementary School attended by at least 500 parents, school staff and children, and officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control who will oversee the project.

Two managers of a circuit board maker with a history of covertly dumping hazardous waste have been charged with putting copper and acid into a sewer system in Santa Ana, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Nandell Patel, 38, of Cerritos and Vijay Merchant, 53, of Mission Viejo were charged Thursday with 11 felony counts. Merchant is president of Golden West Circuits in Santa Ana.

Two managers of a circuit-board maker with a history of covertly dumping hazardous waste have been charged with putting copper and acid into a sewer system in Santa Ana, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Nandell Patel, 38, of Cerritos and Vijay Merchant, 53, of Mission Viejo were charged Thursday with 11 felony counts of dumping hazardous waste into a sewer. Patel was arrested Monday and held at Orange County Jail on $50,000 bail, officials said.

Congressional representatives and area residents are gearing up to fight proposed Bush administration budget cuts that could slow the federal cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory by at least two years. The cleanup of contaminated water, soil and buildings on the Department of Energy's portion of the Boeing Co.'s Rocketdyne site near Simi Valley is a $250-million effort that began a decade ago. The work is scheduled to be completed by 2007.