Pollution

Chevron Corp. said it was open to an amicable solution to a multibillion-dollar lawsuit in Ecuador. An out-of-court settlement would hinge on state-owned PetroEcuador fulfilling obligations in oil-field cleanups, the company said. The plaintiffs' lawyers say that about 30,000 people have suffered from health problems triggered by pollution caused by Texaco, which Chevron took over in 2001.

Abel Garrido has just struck oil and he's not happy about it. Using a tree branch, the weathered farmer probed the edge of a pond that his cattle use for drinking water and soon turned up the smelly black sludge that he says has killed much of his livestock and sickened his family. "I've lost 30 cows," Garrido said. "I cut them open and their insides are black." Paying the medical bills to treat his three children for skin cancer has cost him his meager savings.

As the hour grows late, President Bush, like many chief executives before him, seems to hear the call of the wild. Honoring a tradition that dates at least to the Reagan administration, Bush is pushing through a bundle of controversial last-minute changes in federal rules -- many of them involving the environment, national parks and public lands in the West.

Re "A new day for diesel," editorial, Dec. 12 The Times' editorial board writes that "when it comes to pollution, somebody always pays a price" and that "currently, the overwhelming majority of the costs are borne by the public." You have it right. Polluting pays when the costs of pollution are externalized onto the public. But you got it wrong when you didn't acknowledge that the current system at the port of Los Angeles -- which allows trucking companies to continue working with independent contractors -- results in even more pollution there, not to mention other effects on our communities.

In the strongest language it has ever used, a United Nations panel says global warming is "very likely" caused by human activities and has become a runaway train that cannot be stopped. The warming of Earth and increases in sea levels "would continue for centuries ... even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized," according to a 20-page summary of the report that was leaked to wire services. The summary of the fourth report by the U.N.'

The Southern California lawyer who successfully prosecuted top Enron executives has been hired by the Navajo tribal government to seek a full cleanup of the old uranium mines contaminating the country's largest reservation. John C. Hueston, who gained fame for his questioning of Enron founder Kenneth L. Lay, contacted the tribe in November after reading articles in The Times about the poisoning of the Navajo homeland as the government mined uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Concerned about the extent of pollution at the beachfront property, federal officials announced Wednesday that they have taken steps to add a shuttered Oxnard metal recycling plant and a massive waste pile on surrounding property to a list of Superfund sites. "We found that there were levels of metals and radioactive materials here that were posing a threat to human health and the environment," said Pete Guria, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency's regional emergency response section.

An environmental group sued PacifiCorp and California's wildlife agency Tuesday over claims that a Klamath River fish hatchery is releasing pollution that is deadly to fish downstream. Klamath Riverkeeper, part of an alliance headed by environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr., filed suit in U.S. District Court in Sacramento alleging discharges from the hatchery violated the Clean Water Act. At issue is the hatchery at the Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath near the Oregon border.

The growth blueprint for San Bernardino County, which projects a 25% increase in population by 2030, fails to adequately assess the effects of increased greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, California's attorney general alleges in a lawsuit seeking to have the plan thrown out. In a suit filed Thursday in San Bernardino County Superior Court, Atty. Gen.