NEWS
July 17, 2013 | By Michael A. Memoli
WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency's Washington headquarters now carries the name of former President Clinton, who acknowledged Wednesday that the honor could have gone instead to his vice president, Al Gore, who is perhaps best known for his work on climate change. But he and others at the naming ceremony said it was a fitting tribute, not so much to the man, but to his administration's environmental legacy. “I think it more than sort of fits, not for me, but for what we did,” Clinton said.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 23, 2013 | By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plans to build the world's largest groundwater treatment center over one of the largest Superfund pollution sites in the United States: the San Fernando Basin. Two plants costing a combined $600 million to $800 million will restore groundwater pumping of drinking water from scores of San Fernando Valley wells that the DWP began closing in the 1980s, the utility said. The plants also will ensure that other wells remain open despite pollution plumes steadily migrating in their direction.
NATIONAL
August 1, 2011 | By Geraldine Baum, Los Angeles Times
A dozen campers look suspiciously at the winding Brooklyn canal they are about to canoe. "OK, what's the most important thing about this waterway?" Owen Foote, their expedition leader, asks. "It stinks!" the preteens squeal in chorus. Indeed it does. But never mind that. The Gowanus Canal is the latest, hottest, coolest spot in a city that won't sleep until it's completely gentrified. Photos: Canoeing down a Superfund site Never mind that the federal government designated the Gowanus a Superfund site last year and "one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the nation.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 31, 2009 | Bettina Boxall
Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to spend $21 million to clean up polluted groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley. Under a consent decree settlement announced last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the company will pump contaminated water from beneath Industry, La Puente and Walnut; build pipelines; and construct and operate a treatment plant. The area is one of four federal Superfund sites in the San Gabriel Valley, where more than 30 square miles of the water table are polluted with solvents and degreasing agents used for decades by business and industry.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 12, 2009 | Jeff Gottlieb
The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed spending at least $36 million to clean up the world's largest deposit of banned pesticide DDT, which lies 200 feet underwater off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Montrose Chemical Corp., which was based near Torrance, released 110 tons of DDT and 10 tons of toxic PCBs into the sewers from 1947 through 1971. The chemicals then flowed into the Pacific.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 13, 2009 | Catherine Saillant
California's top environmental cop Monday rejected an offer to list the contaminated Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Lab near Simi Valley as a federal Superfund cleanup site, saying the state can do the job quicker and more thoroughly.