$100 Million Santa Clarita Valley Settlement Reached

from AP/SFGate

"A $100 million groundwater cleanup deal was struck after a nearly seven-year legal battle with former and current owners of a defunct munitions plant.

Four Santa Clarita Valley water agencies agreed to the settlement calling for the Whittaker-Bermite facility's current and former owners to clean up the perchlorate contamination. The chemical is used in the manufacture of explosives, munitions and rocket fuel.

The Castaic Lake Water Agency, Newhall County Water District, Santa Clarita Water Co. and Valencia Water Co. sued current and former operators of the munitions site after perchlorate was found in five Santa Clarita Valley wells.

"This ensures funding for a very important cleanup project in the Santa Clarita Valley. It's very nice that we have a cooperative approach," attorney Frederic A. Fudacz said.

The settlement, reported Thursday by the Daily Journal, must be approved by a federal bankruptcy judge in Arizona because the site's current owners, Remediation Financial Inc. and Arizona-based Santa Clarita LLC, filed for bankruptcy in 2002.

The 1,000-acre Bermite site manufactured ammunition, explosives, flares and detonators since the 1940s. Whittaker Corp. operated the site until 1999, when it was purchased by Remediation Financial and Santa Clarita LLC.

The settlement agreement reached by Whittaker, Remediation Financial and Santa Clarita provides $100 million for the construction of replacement wells, pipelines and a treatment facility to remove perchlorate. . ."

lolwalmart

Wal-Mart has recalled baby bibs that they've been selling since 2004. Although the bibs feature kids' favorite Sesame Street characters, they also contain lead. The lead helps make the PVC softer, but there are other ways of doing that.

Incidentally, the recall followed a lawsuit filed by Oakland's very own Center for Environmental Health, who became aware of the high lead levels in September.

But hey, at least it's cheap, right?

AP/Dallas News story here

lolbison

this is more what i was going for in that last post

"Reign of Terror" Comes to End...Good Riddance

from the AP Wire, via truthout

I especially like the CBE quote:

An Interior Department official accused of pressuring government scientists to make their research fit her policy goals has resigned.

Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, submitted her resignation letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, a department spokesman said Tuesday.

MacDonald resigned a week before a House congressional oversight committee was to hold a hearing on accusations that she violated the Endangered Species Act, censored science and mistreated staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

MacDonald was recently rebuked by the department's inspector general, who told Congress in a report last month that she broke federal rules and should face punishment for leaking information about endangered species to private groups.

. . .

Environmentalists cheered the departure of MacDonald, who they say tried to bully government scientists into altering their findings, often without scientific basis.

"Julie MacDonald's reign of terror over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is finally over," said Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Endangered species and scientists everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief."

MacDonald, a civil engineer with no formal training in natural sciences, had served in her post since 2004. She was a senior adviser in the department for two years before that.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said MacDonald had "betrayed the mission she swore to uphold," adding that her actions "undermined both the work and the integrity of the Fish and Wildlife Service and its many dedicated employees."

. . .

The inspector general's report said MacDonald tried to remove protections for a rare jumping mouse in the Rocky Mountains based on a questionable study, and reduced by 80 percent the amount of streams to be protected to help bull trout recover in the Pacific Northwest.

MacDonald also pressured the Fish and Wildlife Service to alter findings on the Kootenai River sturgeon in Idaho and Montana so dam operations would not be harmed, the report said.



i wanted to write on this picture: "i's in yr depratmnt, mezzin wiht yr sienze" a la LOLcats, but i couldn't figure out how

Mom's Bad News

this reuters article is currently yahoo news' most viewed story:

Arctic ice cap melting 30 years ahead of forecast

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. ice expert said on Tuesday.
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This means the ocean at the top of the world could be free or nearly free of summer ice by 2020, three decades sooner than the global panel's gloomiest forecast of 2050.

No ice on the Arctic Ocean during summer would be a major spur to global warming, said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado.

"Right now ... the Arctic helps keep the Earth cool," Scambos said in a telephone interview. "Without that Arctic ice, or with much less of it, the Earth will warm much faster."

That is because the ice reflects light and heat; when it is gone, the much darker land or sea will absorb more light and heat, making it more difficult for the planet to cool down, even in winter, he said.

Scambos and co-authors of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data and visual confirmation of Arctic ice to reach their conclusions, a far different picture than that obtained from computer models used by the scientists of the intergovernmental panel.

"The IPCC report was very careful, very thorough and cautious, so they erred on the side of what would certainly occur as opposed to what might occur," Scambos said in a telephone interview.

ICE-FREE SUMMER

The wide possibility of what might occur included a much later melt up north, or a much earlier one, Scambos said.

"It appears we're on pace about 30 years earlier than expected to reach a state where we don't have sea ice or at least not very much in late summer in the Arctic Ocean," he said.

He discounted the notion that the sharp warming trend in the Arctic might be due to natural climate cycles. "There aren't many periods in history that are this dramatic in terms of natural variability," Scambos said.

He said he had no doubt that this was caused in large part by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which he said was the only thing capable of changing Earth on such a large scale over so many latitudes.

Asked what could fix the problem -- the topic of a new report by the intergovernmental panel to be released on Friday in Bangkok -- Scambos said a large volcanic eruption might hold Arctic ice melting at bay for a few years.

But he saw a continued warm-up as inevitable in the coming decades.

"Long-term and for the next 50 years, I think even the new report will agree that we're in for quite a bit of warming," Scambos said.

"We just barely now, I think, have enough time and enough collective will to be able to get through this century in good shape, but it means we have to start acting now and in a big way."

By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters Environment Correspondent