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Sun 5 Jan, 2003 04:56 pm
According the media, Rocket fuel pollutes Southwest water.
"The chemical, called perchlorate, pollutes much of the lower Colorado River -- the main water source for 20 million people across the Southwest -- and has forced the shutdown of hundreds of wells in California.
For decades, waste water containing perchlorate was left to seep into the ground, a company official said.
"There were probably 20-plus years when we didn't have the environmental awareness we have today," said Pat Corbett, the former plant manager who is now the company's environmental technology director."
(source: CNN, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle et. al. . All of January, 5th, 2003)
I'm just wondering a little about the long time, this could happen without any reaction - as it seems to me.
Here, in Germany and Europe, we have since September 1994 strict laws about how to handle this chemical resp. it residues.
Do you have a link to the full story Walter? We have some laws that cover how these types of things are handled too but it's hard to see exactly what is going on here. When they say "for a long time" is could mean "a long time ending last month" or "a long time between 1940 and 1960".
I just did a little more digging on this and found quite a few references. It looks like large quantities of perchlorate were first discovered in this watershed on 1997 and there was little EPA Guidance on it until 1998.
http://www.mwd.dst.ca.us/mwdh2o/pages/news/press_releases/2002-04/Joint_Release_perchlorate.htm
http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/ccl/perchlor/perchlo.html
You get about the full story about 44-times at
http://news.google.com/
(momentarily in the middle/right)
Walter: Thanks for bringing up this subject -- in response to your introductory comments, I'd say that this issue represents yet another response by several European nations that's far more intelligent than *some* in the U.S.
Germany, particularly, appears more and more and more an intelligent world leader, with every passing year.
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