Water Pollution

In the next few weeks and months, water agencies in California will be sending consumers annual water quality reports. At right is a portion of the 1996 report by the Metropolitan Water District. The full list includes average levels, if any, of contaminants found at various test sites. Agencies test for contamination throughout the year and are required to send separate notices when levels exceed safety standards.

Having already signed agreements with two oil companies to clean up one of the city's contaminated drinking-water well sites, Santa Monica is expected to announce an even stronger agreement with a third oil company tonight. Under the deal, Mobil Oil Corp. will pay the city an immediate $2.2 million for costs that the city has incurred since the potentially toxic gasoline additive MTBE was found to be polluting two more of the city's wells in West Los Angeles.

The City Council will consider adopting a law tonight that will allow officials with the Redondo Beach Harbor Patrol to board and inspect any vessel for a marine sanitation device if there is reason to believe that raw sewage has been discharged from the craft.

Military officials said Wednesday that they will not spend more money to clean up landfill sites on the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, maintaining that their proposal is enough to satisfy federal mandates. The controversy over the cleanup at the 4,700-acre base has been raging for years and has raised concerns not only from state environmental agencies but from county water district officials, who fear the toxins are contaminating the ground water.

About 200 birds that live in the murky trash-strewn tidal zone called the Dominguez Channel were taken to a rescue center after an act of vandalism released thousands of gallons of industrial chemicals into a storm drain, officials said. Investigators suspect that someone broke into a chemical transport company yard in unincorporated county territory near Carson on Saturday night and opened the valves on four tanker trucks, California Department of Fish and Game officials said.

A Burbank water-treatment plant, closed by the state as a threat to the purity of municipal water supplies, will resume operations in December, according to government officials. State water experts idled the facility in December over concerns that one of its holding tanks could mix high concentrations of carcinogenic chemicals with water being treated from contaminated wells. After weeks of discussions between Lockheed Martin and government agencies--including the U.S.

It was an old alchemist's trick, dripping deadly cyanide onto a piece of rock to burn out its hidden stores of gold. Two decades ago, Pegasus Gold Inc. turned ancient art into modern riches, building a network of cyanide mines in the Little Rocky Mountains and transforming 38,000 tons a day of some of the lowest-grade ore in the world into Montana's biggest gold mine. After hauling 46 tons of gold out of the barren hills, Pegasus Gold Inc.

It is a river that for much of the year flows almost entirely with treated sewage, a river contained by concrete banks and laden with so much garbage that after it rains, crusts of trash form high-water marks. But in the eyes of the law, the Los Angeles River should be fit for anglers, kayakers and swimmers. Federal law even requires it to be protected as potential drinking water. Now, these conflicting realities have sparked a battle over the river's future.

In a new campaign to protect the quality of Orange County's drinking water supply, officials are offering discounts to Inland Empire dairy farmers who compost their cow manure rather than let it run off into the Santa Ana River. The money-for-manure program is aimed at reducing the amount of salt and nitrates flowing from the river into Orange County's aquifers, a problem that officials consider a long-term threat to local ground water.

Ira Newman has run the same gas station and auto repair shop in Anaheim for 31 years. A small mom-and-pop operation, it employs not only him but his wife, son and seven other people. All of them could be out of work by Christmas, however, unless Newman finds a way around federal requirements for underground gas storage taking effect Dec. 22. "I will have to quit pumping gas," he said. "The feds don't care--they have no heart and soul." The U.S.