Industrial Waste

A survey that water officials hope will pinpoint the source and nature of industrial wastes being discharged into the sewer system will be sent to 15,000 South County businesses over the next week. A consortium of eight water and sanitation districts in South County is trying to learn the source of potentially harmful chemicals that cannot be treated by sewer plants.

"Manufactured Landscapes" opens with one of the most engrossing, unnerving tracking shots in recent cinematic history, a seven-minute vista that perfectly encapsulates the points this unsettlingly beautiful and intentionally disturbing film wants to make. The shot takes us through, at a slow and stately pace that goes on long enough to become disorienting, a Chinese factory that is apparently the world's largest manufacturer of irons.

The City Council will hire a consultant to inspect local industrial plants that may be discharging illegal chemicals into the South Gate sewer system. Unusual damage to the city's sewer lines was discovered earlier this year after the city conducted a study in which video cameras were placed in the lines near industrial plants, said Jim Biery, director of public works.

The 9-acre waterfront plot at the northwest edge of downtown Seattle was an oil depot for much of the last century; for years it was considered a fuel-soaked toxic waste site. After a decade-long cleanup, it caught the eye of developers, who floated proposals for apartment buildings there in the 1990s.

Standing atop the bluffs at Santa Monica's Palisades Park or walking on the warm sands of Huntington Beach, it is easy to picture the sea as unimaginably vast, almost limitless. Oceans, after all, cover 70% of the Earth's surface and contain 98.8% of its water. But oceans also receive enough of the world's wastes to raise public fears about the safety of such pleasurable pastimes as swimming, surfing and fishing.

Metalclad Corp. said Monday that it has entered an agreement with a unit of Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. to form a joint venture to develop industrial waste collection, transportation, recycling, treatment and disposal services throughout Mexico. Quimica Omega, a unit of Metalclad, will contribute an industrial waste business to the joint venture, while Browning-Ferris will contribute transportable industrial waste processing equipment.

A river polluted with waste from Brazil's biggest city, Sao Paulo, covered streets in a small colonial town Friday with a thick layer of snow-like foam that emits harmful acidic gas. A town official said the foam had been affecting Pirapora do Bom Jesus for about a month, but a clogged channel made the foam levels rise especially high, blocking bridges across the Tiete River. "It is all a dreadful consequence of Sao Paulo city's pollution," said Mare Brasilio, a town spokeswoman.

Investigators from Arizona and the federal government raided the offices of a California waste company Tuesday after authorities said they uncovered evidence showing that the firm's employees have been selling methamphetamine ingredients seized at drug labs to drug dealers.

People living just outside this farming community are fighting a city plan to use a grove of poplar trees to suck sewage and industrial waste from the ground like 100-foot soda straws. The experimental new approach is generating interest around the world as a green solution to a messy problem, and Dallas is one of the first places it is being tried. Dallas plans to spray a grove of the trees with waste water from a computer circuit-board factory.

Scientist Mikhail Grachev spent a decade studying the natural wonders of Siberia's Lake Baikal--so ancient and isolated, its water is acclaimed as among the purest in the world. Last year, riding Russia's capitalist tide, he helped open a factory to bottle the lake and sell it. For Grachev, the commercial venture is an attempt to merge Russia's economic transformation with environmental preservation: to save the world's oldest and deepest lake by making money from it.

In another triumph for direct democracy in a country that tends to be ruled from the top down, Japanese voters Sunday rejected plans for an industrial waste plant in the central town of Mitake and signaled demands for a better balance between economic growth and environmental protection. Underscoring the interest in the issue, 87.5% of Mitake voters turned out for the poll and overwhelmingly rejected the plant by a vote of 10,373 to 2,442.

Republic Industries Inc. has agreed to acquire two solid-waste companies in Southern California and has bought a third in Idaho for a combined $65 million in stock, adding to Chairman Wayne Huizenga's waste-collection business. Consolidated Disposal Service Inc. of Santa Fe Springs collects waste in Los Angeles County, while Bel-Art Environmental Services Inc. serves Long Beach. The acquisitions are part of Republic's strategy to expand its waste business in the West.

Entrepreneurial artists, take note: A sculptor who uses industrial waste for his creations was awarded Britain's prestigious Turner Prize for contemporary art work. Tony Cragg, whose works are made from used bottles, jars and containers as well as lumps of rock and bits of wood, was awarded the $18,300 prize by London's Tate Gallery on Tuesday night.

China announced a ban Friday on dumping radioactive waste at sea and said it would phase out sea disposal of industrial waste. The ban takes effect today, the official Xinhua News Agency said. China previously allowed dumping of low-level radioactive waste at sea with government permission.

Metalclad Corp. said Monday that it has entered an agreement with a unit of Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. to form a joint venture to develop industrial waste collection, transportation, recycling, treatment and disposal services throughout Mexico. Quimica Omega, a unit of Metalclad, will contribute an industrial waste business to the joint venture, while Browning-Ferris will contribute transportable industrial waste processing equipment.