Waste Materials

Tons of trash at a Riverside County landfill may be headed to the fuel pump with the help of a $40-million federal grant awarded Wednesday. BlueFire Ethanol Inc. of Irvine, which proposed the California waste-to-ethanol project, was among six companies to win $385 million from the Energy Department as part of President Bush's push to cut gasoline consumption by 20% over the next decade.

Rialto is developing a taste for grease. A Rialto wastewater treatment plant will be powered in the future by used kitchen grease, waste sludge and a hydrogen fuel cell under a $15.1-million project to be announced today. The city of Rialto, which teamed with Chevron Energy Solutions and FuelCell Energy, said the endeavor would cut landfill wastes and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as bring in new revenue and save the city $800,000 a year in energy costs.

Los Angeles appeared to win a round Monday in its legal battle to keep dumping 250,000 tons of sewage sludge every year on farmland near Bakersfield. U.S. District Judge Gary Feess said he planned to issue a written ruling within a few days granting a preliminary injunction in favor of the city and its co-plaintiffs, including the sanitation districts for Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance Tuesday that would allow authorities to seize and impound vehicles used in the illegal dumping of waste. The owner of the vehicle would be responsible for the costs associated with the seizure, towing, impounding, storage and release of the vehicle. The vehicles would be held 30 days for each offense.

For a decade, former truck driver Chris Rufer has been processing tomatoes at a towering white plant amid northern Sacramento Valley farms, building his Morning Star Packing Co. into one of the world's biggest makers of bulk tomato products that eventually grace spaghetti, pizza, tacos and hamburgers.

It would be hard to miss the piles left at the curb by Nebraska and Marna, a Labrador and a golden retriever whose constitutionals have gotten on the nerves of residents in a local retirement community. And therein lies the stink. Nebraska and Marna are guide dogs that assist Dennis and Shirley Bartlett, a blind couple living in the Desert Grove development.

The federal government has given Florida permission to dump more than 500 million gallons of wastewater from an abandoned phosphate plant into the Gulf of Mexico. The Environmental Protection Agency approved the dumping Wednesday after determining that continued heavy rain could cause a wastewater spill at the plant. If the untreated, acidic water reached Tampa Bay, it could cause a massive fish kill, according to environmental reports.

Laguna Beach, a city once so plagued with sewage spills caused by restaurant grease that the state fined it $60,000, announced recently that an aggressive campaign to clean up its image has prevented all such spills for more than a year. "This is an amazing turnaround," said Assistant City Manager John Pietig. Spills from overflowing sewage lines blocked by restaurant grease -- often polluting beaches and the ocean -- are "virtually not a problem at all."

About 10 tons of electronic waste, including potentially hazardous cathode ray tubes from computer monitors and other dangerous materials, was found dumped Wednesday morning on a vacant lot in Long Beach, officials said. Jim Kuhl, an official with the city's waste management department, said the refuse apparently was dumped during the night at 16th Street and Long Beach Boulevard because laws prohibit the disposal of the tubes, which contain lead, in commercial landfills.

Organic wastes such as paper mill sludge or cheese whey can be converted into hydrogen using an inexpensive metal catalyst, researchers say, in a process that could boost efforts to replace oil and gas fuels. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin tested more than 300 metal combinations before finding that a mix of nickel, tin and aluminum could separate hydrogen from a mixture rich in glucose, a sugar common in many organic wastes. Researchers reported on the study in the journal Science.