Word: casmalia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Townspeople near the hazardous-waste site in Casmalia, Calif., allege that they are suffering from runny noses, bronchitis, sore throats, headaches and eye irritation. Santa Barbara county officials have been at work clarifying the problem. They found the area was experiencing a spider migration described by the agricultural commissioner as "common." If cobwebs can result in community hysteria and "burning skin and eyes," certainly the odors common to any waste facility have little chance of being understood. Jan Lachenmaier Director of Public Relations Casmalia Resources Santa Barbara, Calif. Soviet Charmer...
...matter how carefully Casmalia Resources goes about its business, says Lachenmaier, the p.r. director, some of the people who live nearby will remain unhappy. "They have a provincial view of the situation," she says. "They don't want us to exist--and that's the bottom line." Toxic waste must go somewhere, she pleads. Why not here...
Which sounds reasonable. The site is remote. The geology is well charted. The facility has been designed to handle dangerous industrial poisons. But down in Casmalia, it still stinks...
...even the rich family in Casmalia shares the concerns. Dave Tompkins came to ranch in 1937, after college, and he now has many hundreds of cattle, many hundreds of acres, and oil leases. Mature olive trees and enormous pink roses line the front yard of his splendid hacienda. "Something's wrong," says his wife. Dave nods. "There is something funny going on," he says...
...Casmalia Resources is open 24 hours, and every day about a hundred trucks roll in and out. The vast site could be on Mars. Hills and canyons are denuded. The great dirt expanses where steel drums are buried dwarf the bulldozers and moon-suited workers. Dozens of deep pools of dark, still liquids, interconnected by a web of white pipes running uphill and down, pock the landscape. Oily sludge is stirred into the ground. A tanker truck squirts full blast into a waste pond. With its tidy system of interlacing roads and sharply etched contours, the dump is as neat...