Hazardous Materials Disposal

Legislation to encourage the cleanup of thousands of moderately polluted parcels of land around the country won unanimous Senate approval Wednesday after securing the endorsement of President Bush. The so-called brownfield bill, named for the often-abandoned industrial or commercial lots that blight many urban landscapes, would provide as much as $250 million a year in federal funds over the next five years to help state cleanup efforts.

The Bush administration has omitted any money from the federal budget to continue the cleanup of a huge uranium slag heap in southern Utah that has been leaking radioactive waste into the Colorado River. Perched about 750 feet from the river's edge near the small town of Moab, the waste heap is the size of a football field and contains 13 tons of material left over from a uranium mill that shut down in 1984.

A metal-plating shop owner was sentenced Monday to 18 months in federal prison for illegally dumping cyanide, nickel and other corrosive chemicals into San Luis Obispo sewer lines, the U.S. attorney's office said. U.S. District Judge William J. Rea in Los Angeles issued the sentence three months after finding Edward Fixen, 60, guilty of seven felony counts of violating the federal Clean Water Act. Fixen had a permit to discharge some waste water from his electroplating shop.

A Texaco subsidiary pleaded guilty Monday to two felony charges and was fined $4 million for discharging millions of gallons of polluted waste water into the Dominguez Channel near its Wilmington refinery and into a creek in San Luis Obispo. Roger Hadley, a vice president of Texaco Refining and Marketing Inc. of Houston, entered the company's plea to violating the federal Clean Water Act during a hearing before U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow.

While the foul-smelling gasoline additive MTBE has contaminated water wells around California, perhaps nowhere has it raised a bigger stink than in the picturesque tourist destination of Morro Bay. After the chemical compound was found near city wells, an investigation turned up one bombshell after another. A former gas station employee testified in January that records had been falsified to hide leaks from gasoline storage tanks.

A handful of protesters yelled and waved signs Monday as trucks loaded with hazardous waste drove past them outside Boeing's Rocketdyne division's Santa Susana Field near Chatsworth. For the next three to five months, trucks will transport 14,000 tons of chemically contaminated dirt from the former Santa Susana sodium disposal facility to a dump in Kern County, said Rocketdyne spokesman Dan Beck.

Trucks on Monday began moving 14,000 tons of hazardous waste from Boeing's Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Chatsworth to a dump in Kern County, despite some protests. The work of removing soil that was chemically contaminated by past owners of the onetime Santa Susana sodium disposal facility will go on for three to five months, Rocketdyne spokesman Dan Beck said. "We're delivering the hazardous soil to the appropriate facility and taking it out of this community," Beck said.

The Glendale City Council agreed Tuesday to hire a Santa Monica consulting firm to study construction of a water treatment facility to purge chromium 6 from municipal water supplies. Glendale will pay McGuire Environmental Consultants Inc. $50,000 to examine options for facilities to treat chromium 6-tainted water and a timetable to implement a plan. The 5 to 0 council vote comes less than a month after the U.S.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday extended for 60 days a deal that permits the city of Glendale to dump millions of gallons of chromium 6-tainted drinking water into the Los Angeles River instead of piping it to homes. "Until we are told the water is safe, we are hesitant to start delivering it," Glendale spokesman Ritch Wells said. Glendale was supposed to start accepting the water Sept. 25.

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday extended for 60 days a deal that permits the city of Glendale to dump millions of gallons of chromium 6-tainted drinking water into the Los Angeles River instead of piping it to homes. "Until we are told the water is safe, we are hesitant to start delivering it," Glendale spokesman Ritch Wells said. Glendale was supposed to start accepting the water Sept. 25.