Hazardous Materials

Four years ago, customers bought bagels, snacks, liquor and Mexican food at the Canoga Center. But the only signs of life now at the little strip mall, which sits vacant behind a 10-foot-high fence and razor wire, are the shining eyes of stray cats peering from dark doorways. Pigeons have claimed what remains of the Chatsworth Plating Co., a firm that Los Angeles County prosecutors allege poisoned the lot on Canoga Avenue.

An angry Supervisor Todd Spitzer blasted the county staff Friday after learning that a contract to study landfills at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station will cost three times what supervisors have been told. "The magnitude of this deception is more overwhelming than I had imagined," Spitzer said. "Who is giving orders and who is taking responsibility for these actions being taken?"

High levels of a contaminant that can cause thyroid damage have been found in the ground water at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, but regulators say it is difficult to assess how serious a risk the chemical poses. The contaminant--ammonium perchlorate--is an explosive chemical once used in the production of solid rocket fuel.

Residents of Northridge and the surrounding communities can safely dump unused household hazardous waste products today and Saturday. The city's Hazmobile, a toxic cleanup unit, will be at Cal State Northridge to collect dangerous waste materials from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. each day. The Hazmobile will be stationed in Lot T, located on the corner of Lindley Avenue and Lemarsh Street, one block south of Devonshire Street.

County firefighters evacuated seven homes in an El Monte neighborhood Friday after children there discovered a volatile chemical from a drug laboratory and took it to a home in the 2600 block of Gage Avenue, where it began to smoke. Firefighters immediately saturated the material, which appeared to be red phosphorous, before a hazardous materials team arrived to clean it up, county Fire Inspector Ed Loney said. No one was hurt, he said.

A hydrogen sulfide gas and sulfuric acid leak caused by overcharged vehicle batteries led to the evacuation of a health products company Monday and sent seven people to the hospital, a Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman said. The incident at Leiner Health Products Inc. in the 900 block of East 233rd Street in Carson occurred at 12:33 a.m., said fire spokesman Ed Loney. The vitamin manufacturer uses the batteries to power forklifts used inside the building.

Dredging of the north entrance to the Marina del Rey channel, which had been piled with storm-borne sediment, should be completed by Friday, officials said. But the problem of how to dispose of hazardous material is likely to postpone dredging of the nearly unnavigable south entrance. Removal of 93,000 cubic meters of sediment from the north entrance began March 13, said Stan Wisniewski, director of the county Department of Beaches and Harbors.

Vice President Al Gore threatened Tuesday to expand government regulations requiring industry to tell Americans about chemicals it releases in their communities, and the chemical industry said it had already approved a plan to do just that. No sooner had the vice president called for wider testing of chemicals, and greater public access to data about potential health hazards of widely used chemicals, than the Chemical Manufacturers Assn.

In a cluttered UC Irvine science laboratory some 2,000 miles from the bucolic lake where the alarming amphibians were first spotted, the mystery of the deformed Minnesota frogs may be close to being solved.

Bio Gro, the firm that has proposed trucking sewage sludge to the High Desert and composting it for use as fertilizer, was dealt a setback this week when state water regulators ordered it to cease current operations. The Oakland firm, whose proposal for a 67-acre composting facility is scheduled to come before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, was told to stop spreading sludge from L.A.'