23,000 truck loads of toxic waste are missing

The Director and Assistant Director of the
California Department of Toxic Substances Control
(AP File Photo)

Idiots Run California

California can't find tens of thousands of trucks filled

with cancer causing toxic waste.

As a John Muir Conservative Conservationist, the massive fucking stupidity of humans never ceases to amaze me.  Democrat or Republican, it does not matter.  We are ruled over by morons.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control cannot account for 174,000 tons of hazardous material shipped for disposal in the last five years, a Times analysis found. That's more than 23,000 truck or tanker loads.

The state database shows they were shipped but gives no indication they arrived at their intended destinations — many of which are out of state.

These so-called lost loads include more than 20,000 tons of lead, a neurotoxin; 520 tons of benzene, a carcinogen; and 355 tons of methyl ethyl ketone, a flammable solvent some in the industry call "methyl ethyl death," reports the Los Angeles Times.

Nearly 60% of those loads are classified as hazardous by federal standards — meaning the waste is so potentially harmful it must be regulated in all 50 states. The rest falls under California's stricter standards.

Top regulators acknowledge flaws in the tracking system but insist that public health is not threatened. They say they are confident that missing shipments find their way to authorized disposal sites. But, they admit, they can't be sure.

"We don't know," said Debbie Raphael, director of the department, which has a $189-million budget and about 900 employees. "It's a question mark."

"I do not believe that Californians are at risk," Raphael said with a straight face.

"I think it's completely unacceptable that California is unable to track waste from where it is generated to its disposal site," said Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Salinas), chairman of the Assembly's committee on environmental safety and toxic materials.

Even a small amount of errant waste can create "a very big public health impact," said W. Bowman Cutter, an associate professor in the environmental analysis program at Pomona College, who has studied the state's hazardous waste system.

"These are all wastes that have been shown to be harmful to health directly," he said, referring to the most dangerous compounds, including lead and benzene.

Idiots on Parade
In 2010 (under GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) teachers and children at Saul Martinez Elementary School in Mecca were evacuated from the school, overwhelmed by noxious odors from Western Environmental.
.
Year after year the trucks rolled in, dumping loads of sewage sludge and contaminated dirt at a soil-recycling plant in this tiny desert community.
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Thousands of deliveries were dutifully recorded in a state database. Anyone who checked it would have seen that the plant had no state permit to accept hazardous waste.
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Yet the dumping went on for seven years — because state regulators either did not look at their own records or did not act on the information. The waste piles grew, rising 40 feet above the Coachella Valley floor. The stench worsened too.
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Eventually, noxious odors swept over Saul Martinez Elementary School, more than a mile away. Children vomited. Teachers gasped for breath. Even then it took a storm of publicity and pressure from a U.S. Senator before regulators stopped the dumping in 2011.
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"It was just blatant negligence," said Celia Garcia, then a teacher at the school, where two of her children were students.
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(Christina House / For The Times)

Environmentally Friendly
What to do with cancer causing toxic waste?  I know, let's pay some poor rural city to dig a hole in the ground and then we can truck in and dump the barrels.  Out of sight, out of mind.  I guess these clowns never heard of Erin Brockovich.

After dumping a load of waste, a truck exits the Chemical Waste
Management Company in Kettleman City.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)