Terminal Island

Gilbert Flores strode across a slab of cracked pavement beside twin concrete domes blackened with soot. It was as ugly as could be, but Flores could see the future, and to him it's beautiful. "Imagine what this place will look like with some Italian cypresses and ficus trees," he said. "Spectacular."

Amid fears that waterfront tank farms may become terrorists' targets, the Port of Los Angeles is seeking to move at least two major cargo terminals for jet fuel and other hazardous materials away from San Pedro and Wilmington neighborhoods. Port officials are focusing on potential new sites off the populated coast, looking both at heavily industrialized Terminal Island, and at the new and sprawling harbor landfill area called Pier 400, about a mile southeast of San Pedro.

The city of Los Angeles is seeking federal permission for an unprecedented subterranean experiment that officials say could both solve a messy environmental problem and ease tensions with rural neighbors over sewer sludge dumping. The plan calls for injecting treated sludge into a nearly depleted oil and gas reservoir a mile beneath the earth--and half a mile under the water table--at Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor.

A sleeping bag and a shoe found Friday by Los Angeles police divers may be clues to the deaths of a woman and a girl whose bodies were discovered under a commercial fishing boat off Long Beach, authorities said. The items were recovered from the murky waters off Terminal Island a few feet from where the bodies were found in Fish Harbor on Thursday. The woman and girl were discovered under the 85-foot-long Sea Queen II, which was docked near Tuna Street, police said.

The life of Henry T. Nicholas III ("Extreme Tech," by P.J. Huffstutter, Jan. 23) has all the makings of a Greek tragedy. Abandoned by an alcoholic father, overachieving to a point of near self-destruction--who knows what the Furies scream at his inner child? Bullying, browbeating, berating his subordinates (much like his father treated his mother), Nicholas certainly has had the sins of his father visited upon him. Sacrificing his family (his "reason for living") on the altar of ego, giving away millions to buy respect, throwing parties with rockers and porno stars to boost an image.

Councilman Mike Feuer introduced a motion Friday seeking a review of the possible health risks posed by coke dust at the Port of Los Angeles, one day after the U.S. Customs Service announced plans to remove about 500 workers from the area. Because of possible hazards from the dust, the U.S. Customs Service said Thursday that it will move its employees from a facility next to the Los Angeles Export Terminal, which handles and stores coal and petroleum coke.

The controversy surrounding potentially harmful petroleum coke in the county's ports broadened Thursday, when a second lawsuit was filed against a major coal terminal and the U.S. Customs Service announced plans to close its main building on Terminal Island, partly because of coke dust contamination.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Wednesday that it is investigating whether coal terminals and storage areas in the county's ports are emitting hazardous petroleum coke residues in violation of state air and water pollution standards. Meanwhile, a U.S.

Air quality officials say they will approve a plan to allow an export terminal to store and ship coke--a type of coal used for industrial fuel and a known carcinogen--from the Port of Los Angeles for a year while enclosures are built to cover the piles. Construction of the $14.2-million coke domes is scheduled to be completed by March 31, 1999 under the agreement worked out by the Air Quality Management District and the Los Angeles Export Terminal.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District Board will hold a public hearing Saturday on the environmental safety of a new coal and coke facility at the Port of Los Angeles. At issue is whether Los Angeles Export Terminal, a massive new coal exporting facility, should be allowed to leave enormous coke piles in the open air when other ports, including the neighboring Port of Long Beach, store coke in large sheds. Petroleum coke contains known carcinogens.