By a vote of 8-0, the Union County Freeholders has approved the largest treatment plant in the world for hazardous infectious medical waste to be sited in Linden, New Jersey. The Union County Freeholders will give all the profits to the owners, except for a promise of $750,000 to Linden for signing the deal. Hospitals pay up to $60 per ton to dispose off their waste, and at most $6 to $12 per ton will go to Linden. Joe Parrish of the NJ/NY Environmental Watch based in Elizabeth, New Jersey, complains: "The owners will become fabulously wealthy on the backs of Union County residents and other New Jersey residents. The County did not even see it fit to charge a fee for the formation of the necessary emergency response unit which will be required for each township through which the waste will move in Union County." Over 85 per cent of all medical waste in New Jersey, and not excluding medical waste from New York and other states, will be treated annually, sincethe facility will have a capacity exceeding 18,000 tons per year. Over 60 tons per day of hazardous medical waste will be processed with dilute bleach which has a kill factor of no more than 92 per cent, warns Parrish. Treated material will be handled as common household waste. The plant will be located in a modest income Black and Hispanic neighborhood.

Greens take out a protest rally in LA

Nearly 200 environmentalists joined leaders of Colombia's U'wa tribal people in a march through Los Angeles recently to protest Occidental Petroleum's planned drilling on the tribe's rainforest homeland. The demonstrators rallied in front of the oil company's headquarters at Wilshire and Westwood with signs and giant banners demanding Oxy cancel its proposed project. Twenty of the demonstrators marched out onto Wilshire Blvd., chanting "Oxy out of U'wa land." They blocked traffic in front of the company's main entrance. All were arrested by LA police. The U'wa leaders arrived in LA to speak directly to Oxy atthe company's annual shareholders' meeting in Santa Monica where the fate of the drilling project could be decided. The U'wa live next to Oxy's existing Cano Limon oil project, a target for rebel, military and paramilitary activity. It has been bombed, according to Oxy's figures, 23 times in the past year, and 500 times in its 12 year history. The bombings have spilled roughly 1.7 million barrels of crude oil into Colombia's rainforest and rivers.

Enough water in California this year

California state water officials say 1999 generally appears to be a year of ample water supplies, due to heavy rainfall and a thick snowpack in the Northern Sierra Mountains. Water storage levels are high at the 155 major reservoirs in California. The State Water Project, operated by Department of Water Resources, expects to meet 100 per cent of water deliveries requested for 1999. Though 1999 brought heavy precipitation to Northern California in a record fifth consecutive wet winter, central and southern Sierrasnowpack is below average. This illustrates the uncertainty of weather and snowfall from year to year and region to region. In fact, California faces a constant challenge to match water supplies with growing water needs. Water supplies are a limited resource, and precipitation amounts are uncertain, while water needs and California's population continue to expand.

Wisconsin wolf population growing

Wisconsin's timber wolf population increased about 11 per cent from 1998, according to results of an annual winter population count conducted by state wildlife biologists. There are now about 200 wolves in 54 packs up from an estimated population of about 180 wolves in 46 packs last year. "This is a minimum population count because we may have missed some lone wolves not currently living in packs because they are harder to pick up. But we are fairly confident about our pack counts," said Adrian Wydeven, a Department of Natural Resources biologist and wolf specialist in Park Falls. Eight packs consistingof 25 to 28 wolves are located in the central forest from eastern Eau Claire County down to the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Juneau County. The other 46 packs are located across northern Wisconsin. Wolf population counts have been made annually since 1979 using aerial observations of radio-collared wolves and their companions and snow tracking by Department of Natural Resources biologists and volunteers.