Friday, March 31, 2006

The L.A. Times hates our troops

Those environmental reporters from the L.A. Times can still knock it out of the park.

Wednesday's article on the Pentagon's efforts to undercut the EPA's warnings about the dangers of TCE has major ramifications for Mountain View. The chemical solvent has been found seeping into homes at Orion Park, along Whisman Road, and at Whisman Station. The Navy and private companies that put it there are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, by one official's estimate, to remove it. So far they've been fairly successful, despite occasionally getting caught spewing the stuff into the air or shipping it off to an Indian reservation. But, according to the Times, they have had even more success attacking the EPA's health warnings than they have had cleaning it up.

Ironically, the same day the first story came out (follow-ups the next day told the stories of a particularly troubled community in Texas and the problems of San Gabriel Valley), the paper's management issued a memo to the staff urging them to cut back on their story lengths.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess some folks gambling at some Indian casinos are taking some high-stakes risks they hadn't counted on?

Too bad the TCEs couldn't just go to reservations where Jack Abramoff & his K Street pals hang out. At least then there'd be some tidbit of justice.

Anonymous said...

Where is Jan Schlichtmann when we need him?!

Anonymous said...

I think the point is that even Jan Schlichtmann (who by the way bankrupted himself losing that case) can't do much if the Bush Administration is politicizing the science behind health standards.