Huge DDT Dumping Ground Found Near Catalina

Speaker 1: 00:00 So much early voting in San Diego could mean we know winners tonight Speaker 2: 00:05 When we released the first set of results at 8:00 PM shortly after the polls closed that the number will be a pretty large number. Speaker 1: 00:12 I'm Maureen Cavenaugh with Alison st. John. This is KPBS mid day edition. Speaker 2: 00:24 [inaudible] Speaker 1: 00:24 San Diego city council puts an action plan in place to preserve existing affordable housing. Speaker 2: 00:30 The plan would be for the city to go in and talk to the developer and say, Hey, we understand you have a right in a few years to make these market rate. We would like to talk to you about giving you additional subsidies now so that you can keep them subsidized and low rent for a long time. Speaker 1: 00:43 An ethics center discussion focuses on bias in the new media ecosystem and an environmental disaster is discovered off the coast of Catalina Island. That's a head-on midday edition with over a million early voting ballots already cast in the County. San Diegans have this one last day to head to the polls to take part in what many are calling at a stark election? San Diego is 235 in-person polling places are up and running and ballot drop boxes are located in libraries and other facilities across the County. Joining made to tell us how the voting has been going and what you need to know about this last voting day of the 2020 election season is San Diego County register of voters, Michael VU, and Michael, welcome back. Thanks Speaker 2: 01:29 For having me today, election day Speaker 1: 01:31 Now with so many early voting ballots already cast, are you expecting long lines of polling places today? Speaker 2: 01:38 We always expect along the lines at, uh, an election of this magnitude. Uh, but certainly it's part of that is being dampered as a result of so many people returning their mail ballots in advance of today. Um, as you said, is we have over a million mail ballots that have been returned. In fact, we have now in our possession over 1.2 million at mail ballots, but we've got to realize that we have nearly 2 million registered voters. And so those individuals that we don't have, their mail ballots could go to their respective polling locations. Speaker 1: 02:06 San Diego is turnout already breaking records. I mean, what's your total turnout estimate? Speaker 2: 02:11 Well, what I'm estimating is around 80 to 85%. If we hit the 80% Mark, that's going to be particularly for the most part on average of what we've seen in the last four presidential general elections, which is on average 79.5%. Uh, it's been historic thus far hard. The question is whether or not that trend will continue particularly today as individuals exercise their ability to go in-person to any one of the 235 super pawn location, uh, to vote as opposed to voting their respective Mount ballots. Now it's been historic on a number of different levels on unchartered, on other levels as well. Not only the fact that we opened our super polling locations three days in advance of today. Uh, but the fact that we're doing everything differently in terms of that in-person voting experience, the fact that everyone received a that was a voter, uh, by October 19th, a mail ballot, all of those is historic in so many different levels. The fact that tonight, when we released the first set of results at 8:00 PM shortly after the polls closed, that the number will be a pretty large number. I anticipate it's going to be anywhere from 60 to 70%, or maybe even more than that, uh, of the overall votes cast in this election. Once I certify it Speaker 1: 03:22 Well, if someone has filled out their mail in ballot, but they haven't mailed it in yet, what should they do today Speaker 2: 03:29 If they have not mailed in the, their respect about my first recommendation is there are 361 established locations by the registrar voters office that you can drop off your respect to mail balance. That's the 126 mail about drop off locations or, uh, any of the 235 super polling locations that are out there. All of these locations were opened at 7:00 AM and will continue to be open until 8:00 PM to, for you to drop off your respective mail ballot. Now, uh, if you want to drop it through the mail, that's fine. Uh, but know that it has to be postmarked by today. It has to be postmarked by today, uh, and received within 17 days, which is November 20th for us to consider a timely casts. Uh, for me, I would not chance it. I would go to any one of the 361 sites that I just mentioned. Speaker 1: 04:15 Okay. And where can they find those sites? Speaker 2: 04:18 S Steve vogt.com is where you can find our super polling locations as well as our mail ballot drop off locations. Uh, if you want to know where your super poll location is, it's on the, also on the back of your sample ballot pamphlet. We also send out a postcard notice for every voter, which also had where their super poll location was Speaker 1: 04:36 Now, even if a potential voter has been this late in finding out that they aren't registered, they can still vote at a polling place today. Can't they? Speaker 2: 04:45 That is correct. Moraine. Is, is that an individual who did not register on time by October 19th can still participate in this election are encouraged to participate in this election. Uh, what they would need to do is, is get to their assigned polling location. And what they would do is conditionally registered to vote and vote a provisional ballot. Uh, once it comes back to our office, we'll be able to enter their registration form, validate that they haven't voted anywhere else, and then be able to count the ballot. Speaker 1: 05:11 Any tips for voters who were heading to the polls today, Michael, Speaker 2: 05:16 Uh, wear your mask and bring your mask. If you forget it, that's okay because we will have masks at every single one of our super polling locations that is out there, uh, be confident to know that we've done everything in our power, uh, to keep voters safe and healthy, as well as our poll workers too, Speaker 1: 05:32 Since so many mail-in ballots have already been mailed in, and you've been counting them all along. Could we expect some, uh, races to be resolved tonight, some local races to be resolved tonight because of the volume of mail in ballots already counted. Speaker 2: 05:48 Uh, that could be the case. Um, it, because that first report out will be a large number of the votes cast in this upcoming election, uh, but know that there are still many more votes that are out there. And just really, it's going to be dependent on how close and how well or how wide the, the race is between the two candidates or between the yes and no vote on any particular measure that is out there Speaker 1: 06:10 After the first results are released tonight by your office. When is the next ballot count? Announced Speaker 2: 06:15 It will be Thursday evening is when we will release the next set of results. So tonight will be all of the precincts from today's, uh, sets of ballots that were cast. We'll get into the count all 572 precincts, which are reporting to those 235 super polling locations need to be accounted for tonight. And then after the tonight's count, then we will go into what is known as the certification period. And that's the period for us to count any remaining timely cast ballots, including mail polling place, as well as provisional ballots and do all the other things that we need to do to button up the election. Speaker 1: 06:49 I have been speaking with San Diego County register of voters, Michael VU, Michael, thank you. And good luck. Speaker 2: 06:54 Thank you so much, Maureen. Speaker 1: 06:59 The effort to increase affordable housing and rental units in San Diego has focused largely on construction, but last week, the San Diego city council took a different tack spurred by estimates that the city could lose more than half of its 70,000 affordable rental units. In the next 20 years, the council put plans in motion to preserve them. A proposed new law would require private owners of affordable units to alert the city. If they intend to sell, to allow designated non-profits the chance to buy the properties and keep rents low. Joining me a San Diego union Tribune, reporter David Garrick and David, welcome to Speaker 2: 07:36 The program. Thanks for having me. It Speaker 1: 07:38 Was the demolition of affordable rental units in Rancho Penasquitos that apparently got the city thinking about this kind of preservation. Can you tell us about that? Speaker 2: 07:47 Yeah. It was a 300 unit complex in Rancho Penasquitos and before the city even knew what was happening, the, uh, owner had sold it to a private developer to tear it down and build a 600 unit complex. And city officials were kind of frustrated and they felt like if they had known ahead of time that it was going to be sold and then redeveloped, and then they would lose those 300 subsidized units that low-income people really need, that they were able to do something about it. So this law is sort of a reaction to that frustration. The law basically would force someone if they're going to sell a project like that, to alert the city and alert nonprofit developers so that maybe some sort of deal could be worked out Speaker 1: 08:24 Right now, the city, when they have found out about Rancho Penasquitos subsequently, they commissioned a study on affordable housing preservation. And that came up with that estimate that more than half the city's affordable rental units might disappear soon. Why is the city in danger of losing so many affordable rental units? Speaker 2: 08:43 Yeah, it's, you know, it's a complicated thing that the average person doesn't understand, but when someone lives in a subsidized housing, typically the developer has made a deal with either the federal government or a state or local government to lower the rents for a certain number Speaker 3: 08:56 Of years, either 40 years or 55 years. So those all sounded great in 1970, because it seems so far away, but now a lot of those are expiring. And so when a subsidized apartment complex, when the, the rules, the it's called the deed restriction, when the deed restriction expires, then the developer has the ability to start charging market rate rents. So this solution also addresses that. And when, when some of these units are about to expire, the plan would be for the city to go in and talk to the developer and say, Hey, we understand you have a right in a few years to make these market rate, but we would like to talk to you about giving you additional subsidies now so that you would keep them subsidized and low rent for longer. Speaker 1: 09:34 You've been talking about how this relates to subsidized rental housing, but the city council is also talking about other units that have been designated naturally occurring, affordable housing. What does that mean? Speaker 3: 09:48 Uh, that means that this is typically an older apartment complex, that they can't really charge high rents because it's so old and maybe it doesn't have amenities. Maybe it doesn't have skylights. It doesn't have some of the sort of modern things that people look for. And so, while it's not subsidized, the rents are actually low enough that they're similar to a unit that actually gets government subsidies and they call it naturally occurring, affordable housing. They have a new acronym called Noah. Uh, and basically that study that you mentioned earlier, the city has 70,000 units Michael away in the next 20 years. That includes both subsidized affordable housing and NOAA housing, the naturally occurring, uh, units. Uh, so they're all in that one big kettle, because the theory is that even if it's not subsidized, this is what this is what helps the affordable housing crisis. Having these units, whether it's subsidized or whether they're naturally occurring. Speaker 1: 10:37 What else is in this action plan that the city council agreed on? Speaker 3: 10:41 Um, money. Uh, if, if the plan ends up, uh, getting all the money that's requested in it, it'll get 47 million over the next five years. And that will be used to do the kind of things that I was talking about to LinkedIn deed restrictions, and to try to keep some affordable housing existing that may go away. Um, problem is that the city is in a real budget crunch right now because of the COVID-19 pandemic has decreased tourism revenue was San Diego relies on heavily because of conventions and the zoo and bubble park and sea world. And so the council approved it, but they made the, that the money is not mandated that the city council each year will consider this money to preserve affordable housing as part of the overall budget process. But if they get everything they wish for it be 47 million over five years, which is a considerable chunk of money. Speaker 1: 11:26 Does the proposed law say this law, this new law that the city council is proposing, Speaker 3: 11:32 It basically says that if you have a deed restricted property, you are required, it's a property where the rents, you can only start at a certain level of rent, right? That you have to alert the city that you're about to sell. And then you have to give the city the first right of offer and the first right of refusal. And in addition to the city, that also includes nonprofit developers that the city would approve and on a list. So it's a pretty thorough piece of legislation that the city passed. And now that law wasn't approved last week, though, they, they gave the sort of outlines of that law that will have to subsequently come back to the city council to be, yeah. Speaker 1: 12:05 Now, as part of it's a seven part action plan, there's something called a preservation collaborative. What what's that Speaker 3: 12:13 I can say as a reporter, that seems a little vague, and I wish there was a little more meat on the bone on that one. But the idea is that there'll be a, a group of a local think tank where you'd have nonprofits and people focused on housing preservation, and maybe even the regional task force on the homeless. I think they were included come together and just have a regular conversation about what the stats show the city is going to do, update this report on a regular basis now of how much affordable housing there is and how much we're at risk of losing as a city. Um, and so they have a group that's constantly talking and discussing these issues, keeping them out on the forefront. So people like me write stories about them and people like you devote your radio time to them. Speaker 1: 12:49 And this doesn't mean that the city council has taken its eye off the ball of actually creating new housing. Does it, Speaker 3: 12:56 The city officials feel like they need to be to doing two things at once. It makes no sense to keep building and then letting the other stuff that already exists, go away. You need to have a sort of a two front war. The city is choosing to fight a two front war because they think that makes more sense than fighting only a one front war and only building new. Speaker 1: 13:11 I've been speaking with San Diego union Tribune, reporter David Garrick and David, thank you so much. Thanks. This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Maureen Kavanaugh with Alison st. John hospital resources are under a spotlight during COVID-19 governments are counting available hospital beds, ventilators and personal protective equipment to monitor the pandemic's impact. But in our ongoing series, looking at the regions COVID data, KPBS health reporter, Taran mento says hospitals are also focused on the crucial component of staff Speaker 4: 13:44 For Brittany go yet. Home is where her Chihuahua Charlie is. So this is Charlie. Um, that can be like a little bit difficult at times, um, is traveling with a pet and her 10 year old pup are Northern California natives, but [inaudible] is part of a mobile hospital workforce. That's been filling gaps in staffing during COVID and ever since the pandemic began, they've called San Diego home. Then he loves it here as well. He loves running down by the Bay travel nurses like her are flowing to regions where COVID is hitting hospitals. The hardest early on that included sharp Tula Vista medical center. That's where Goyette has worked in the noisy negative pressure rooms to care for senior Egans during their toughest, and sometimes final moments like an elderly COVID patient who was just down the hall from his wife who also had the virus, you meet him. And you're just like, Oh, I really like this guy. Just really funny, really genuine, really nice guy. She recalled the experience during an outdoor interview, near a busy beach side road, both her patient and his wife were near their final treatment options, but he declined anything more and asked only for comfort care go yet, gave him pain medication and held his hand. Um, so I gave him a little bit, but he was still struggling some, and the only thing I could think of to do was say a prayer for him, alcohol. Sorry. Speaker 4: 14:58 And that was hard. Um, cause he's I asked him if you'd like me to pray for him. And he said, yes. So I said, and our father had to pause like every three words, his sons made it before he died, but his wife was unstable and couldn't be transported even down. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately we weren't able to get him to see his wife. Um, that was also really tough. We ended up taking him to her afterwards so she could say goodbye per her request. The pandemic has created more demand for highly qualified ICU nurses, Lakeway yet sharp Chula Vista, director of critical care services. Danesha Jenkins says the state mandates one ICU nurse for every two ICU patients. If we are getting to the point where we're having to go beyond that, then that becomes a very challenging situation to manage. She says the state allowed flexibility during the emergency because ICU nurses are a limited resource. Speaker 4: 15:50 They pulled staff from sister facilities, but Jenkins says they've also heavily relied on skilled travel clinicians to maintain their nursing community. So you track you're checking your ratio daily, hourly. Yeah. Constantly because COVID doesn't care about ratios and a video diary for KPBS score recalled that days, 12 hour shift when she tended to only one patient. Um, we do that often with a lot of our COVID patients. If they're requiring to be manually, prone is what we call it. It took a while yet. And for other ground-up colleagues to flip her sedated patient and improve their oxygen flow. Yeah. I usually leave them on their back for a couple hours if they tolerate it. But my patient, she didn't, she needed her colleagues back quickly, but they were already down the hall turning another patient. And I had to find a whole new group of people to come flip my patient while another patient wasn't doing well. Speaker 4: 16:38 So needless to say it was a pretty busy day, a little bit hectic travel nurses can help make hectic days. Manageable. Jenkin says sharp works to retain its top travel clinicians. So patients continue to see familiar faces, especially behind the heavy safety gear they must wear in the loud negative pressure rooms, but supporting them can be draining on core staff because they're having to orient people every single day to our area, our processing, but it pays off. Jenkins says travel nurses often refer friends in sharp, just extended its contract with God yet. That means she and Charlie get at least three more months in the same place. So I don't feel like you ever feel like this isn't my community because in the end, this is like another human. This is another soul. It's another life that I don't need to be part of your community to make sure I do my best job that I can. Speaker 4: 17:24 And that job has many bright spots. While more than 800 San Diegans have died in the County, thousands have survived. You feel really proud and just like, happy that like you got them there and they all leave a Mark on go yet. She remembered one recovered COVID patient. The day he was going home, but he was heartbroken to be leaving before his wife, another COVID patient in the ICU. So I was like, well, why not? Like bring him up here. He already has COVID. She has. COVID like he should see his wife that time. She was able to reunite a husband with his wife, Taryn mento, KPBS news for more on this series and the county's COVID data go to kpbs.org Speaker 5: 18:08 In this information age, we're all struggling to keep up with the flood of data that reaches us through the media. We use it to make important decisions every day, not just during election time, but more than ever before. We need to assess whether the information that reaches us is accurate biased or flat out lies. Our next guest has founded a company, offering a technology to help detect bias in information. She's the speaker at tomorrow's monthly meeting of the San Diego based center for ethics in science and technology. Tamara [inaudible] is CEO and co-founder of very crypt, which uses artificial intelligence to score bias in use tomorrow. Welcome to midday. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. So now you talk about how the information ecosystem we are living in has changed. And I find thinking of media as an ecosystem is very helpful. How would you describe the state of our information ecosystem right now? Speaker 6: 19:03 Yeah, I think that right now, a good word to describe the state of art ecosystem of information is weaponized. Meaning that certain actors have taken advantage of the freedoms and opportunities that our information ecosystem affords. So here in the States, we have freedom of speech. So we can share freely on the internet, on our news, our press can share freely about their perspectives and present that to the public. But with social media, really anybody can say anything they want and share that publicly. So this gives an opportunity for people that are legitimate to kind of take advantage of the audience that social media offers to especially divisive content. Unfortunately Speaker 5: 19:45 You say, take advantage of the audience, you know, how, how do companies manipulate our ecosystem and therefore us give us examples of how we're being manipulated. Speaker 6: 19:56 Yeah. I feel like ad technology is kind of the driver of why this is all happening. So for example, if you're a news provider and you have a story that's breaking, when you distribute that story, you want to make sure not only that your readers get that information, but also that, uh, that you can make some money. And so the way that these providers and other companies make money is by using ads. And so the way the ads work is you basically set a target audience. So a certain demographic information about a person, maybe a gender or their age, and then that can be used to find people in that category and then present the ads to those people. Um, and then the way the ads work is if you click on the ad and then you follow the instructions or whatever, you can buy the thing. But even if you don't click on the ad, even if you just hover on the ad that gives data to these ad and then they know how better to target you in the future. Um, so in a lot of ways, it kind of all comes down to who's paying for the information that you're seeing on your screen. So now Speaker 5: 20:58 Co-founded a company called very crypt to detect bias in infinite information. And the analogy that you use make sense to me, and that you talk about it like a nutrition label that manufacturers put on food, that, that your technology would provide a, a label that we would put on the information that we're consuming. How do you do that? Speaker 6: 21:18 Essentially, there's a, there's a lot of different algorithms that we use to provide different scores and different, uh, nutritional facts, if you will, to, to news readers. And at the, at the very basis of that is it's the bias metric. And so essentially we define bias as things that are not, not biased. And we can look at, we can look to the dictionary and to the encyclopedias, uh, for example, the encyclopedia Britannica to kind of glean what our culture today in, in English speaking kind of America and great Britain, what we deemed to be quote unquote unbiased. And so it's these kind of dictionary language encyclopedia language that we use to convey knowledge down to the next generation or within our community. And if we, what we've done is essentially modeled the way that, that textbooks. So not just like the words that they're using, but the actual sentence structure and the fragment structure and all of that. Speaker 6: 22:14 And then when we get incoming texts, we essentially compare and see, well, how close is this to our model of what is unbiased based on this culturally kind of accepted definition from the dictionary, from the encyclopedia. But beyond that, we offer some additional metrics such as how sensational the content is. So is it emotionally charged? And if so, in what direction and to what degree, and then also it was this written by a human or a bot because oftentimes even stories that are diligently written by humans are reproduced on the interwebs by bots. And then that's actually how the, the kind of ads are proliferated. What Speaker 5: 22:50 Kind of people want this technology? What kind of clients? Speaker 6: 22:54 There's a lot of people who make money off of our technology. Non-existing our clients are not those people. Our clients are right now, people who are in a data intelligence. So say you're trying to make predictions like geospatial risk analysis or other types of risk analysis. In addition, if you're an investment firm, uh, right now large, uh, finance organizations actually rely on AI to trade. So, uh, what all of our clients kind of have in common is that they take in news as data. And of course, uh, because our mission is to kind of, to help people in the news industry itself, all of the, kind of the, the people trying to bring the truth to the people who are less motivated by, by ads and who don't get their primary income through ad tech, basically. And finally, Speaker 5: 23:40 Tamara, do you have any words of advice for those of us that are swimming in this information about how we can determine bias? Speaker 6: 23:48 Just remember that your brain is kind of designed to take shortcuts and to act with a bias perspective. So sometimes it prevents us from communicating with people who have different opinions than us. And so I challenge you all to kind of broaden your perspective and break down those barriers. Because if we can't communicate, then we'll never be able to fix this problem. Speaker 5: 24:10 We've been speaking with Tamara [inaudible], who is CEO and co-founder of very crypt. Tamara is talk autonomous bias detection in a world of sensational headlines is tomorrow night, Wednesday night at five 30. You can find it on the website of the center for ethics in science and technology tomorrow. Thank you so much. Speaker 6: 24:31 Thank you. Allison Speaker 7: 24:37 Wildfires and drought are hitting the mountain West, especially hard this year and fires. Don't just burn in forest grasslands, starved of moisture and chalk full of invasive plants can burn just as big. Our in-depth look at where water and fire intersect in the region continues today in Wyoming, Catherine Wheeler of Wyoming public radio reports on how researchers are looking at solutions to keep grassland fires in check. I'm standing on the side of a Rocky Hill in Sheraton County in Northern Wyoming. And Bryan Mealer is showing me all of his weeds Speaker 8: 25:15 Here. Let me grab a cheat your so you can see it too. And you're all kind of, they all kind of look the same this time. A year Speaker 7: 25:24 Miller is the director of the university of Wyoming's research and extension center in Chariton. And he's performing experiments on how to manage and kill invasive annual grasses like cheat grass, vent, nada, and Medusa head with herbicides. His goal is to restore range land to its more natural state. And as a result, hopefully make events like wildfires, less devastating. But first it's helpful to understand what these uninvited guests are and why there are harmful to this environment. Dan to Kela is an invasive plant extension specialist at the university of Wyoming. He says there are three things that make plants invasive, starting with the easiest they aren't from here. Generally, Speaker 8: 26:06 We think of something coming from another country. So crossing over something like an ocean or a large boundary, Speaker 7: 26:14 And that allows them to spread easily overwhelming native plants in Wyoming, and much of the West impacts come to ranchers on range land, where these invaders can take over areas meant for grazing. That means less vegetation for animals and wildlife to eat, making the land harder to use, and like all strong enemies, invasive plants are formidable to Kela says invasive plants quickly take over. What's supposed to be a patchy landscape and die creating a lot of wildfire fuel. They Speaker 9: 26:44 Create these really, really thick patches and cause more problems by creating these large fires. That wouldn't happen because typically we have plenty of what's called inner space in those plants so that the fires don't really spread all that well, Speaker 7: 26:58 Most of the attention around wildfires tends to surround forests and while losing trees and concerns about public safety are really important to Kela says there are equal concerns about range land, too. Speaker 9: 27:09 We have the exact same issues and range land. They just aren't as flashy and that they don't create as much smoke. There's not as much biomass to burn. However, in terms of acreage on average, we actually see more acres of range land burning each year than we do a forest. Speaker 7: 27:25 And to Kela says the increased drought across the West, isn't helping these invasive plants can grow back much quicker than native species after a fire. And they can grow with a very little water and that just creates a cycle of problems. So how are Mealer and other researchers trying to fix all this back on the hillside? He showing me about 18 different plots. They were sprayed with an herbicide in different amounts at different times of year. Speaker 8: 27:52 You can see exactly where I sprayed and where I didn't. Right? It's not like there's this sort of vague line. I mean, it is. It's like you just came up here and erased it. See the, like the upper plots right here above us. Speaker 7: 28:05 Some plots, everything is dead. Some plots still have plenty of Brown and green villains, but in others, bright green Western wheat grass is springing up from the ground. Mueller says, that's the goal with these sprain experiments. Speaker 8: 28:19 So we've got a bunch of annual grasses, but there's still a bunch of good guys that are in there as well. And so if we can just reduce the pressure from the annual grasses and we see a really good recovery from those perennial plants, Speaker 7: 28:31 Mealer says these experiments and results. Aren't limited to Wyoming. There are other scientists working on the same issues across the West. In fact, the Western governors association has an invasive species working group where agencies can discuss how these experiments are working in States with different conditions. Speaker 8: 28:49 We cooperate with one another and with industry and with land owners and agencies, and we see a pattern like that that is very consistent across Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Idaho, wherever else. Then it really increases our confidence. Speaker 7: 29:07 Mueller says, as they start to see consistent results, they can start making recommendations to land owners and managers. And it means researchers are steps closer to understanding how to take the bad guys out for good I'm Katherine Wheeler in shared in Wyoming. This story is part of a series looking at where water and wildfire intersect in the West produced by K U N C K J Z Z K H O L, Aspen public radio and Wyoming public radio support comes from the Walton family foundation. You are listening to KPBS Speaker 5: 29:42 Midday edition. I'm Alison st. John, along with Maureen Kavanaugh, mankind has done some terrible things to the environment. And only recently are some of those shocking acts coming to light. An article by LA times, reporter Rosanna Shaw pulls together evidence of a massive dumpsite of half a million barrels of toxic DDT sludge in the deep ocean. Not so far from our San Diego coastline, close to Catalina Island. Research scientists have photographed barrels leaking on the ocean floor that were dumped years ago and found evidence of toxic contamination way beyond that previously recorded in a nearby Superfund site. We're joined now by Rosenna Shaw, who is the environment reporter for the Los Angeles times. Rosanna. Welcome to midday. Speaker 10: 30:27 Hi, Alison. So glad we're talking about this. Okay. Speaker 5: 30:30 No, I imagine that there may be many younger listeners who haven't heard about DDT and its history in this country, fill us in briefly what it is and what it was used for. Speaker 10: 30:41 Yeah. We, we worry a lot today about BPA and P phos, these toxic forever chemicals, but DDT was the original problem. Chemical that is so unnatural that it never really goes away. It was once considered a wonder. Pesticide used a lot during world war two. And it was so strong that a single application could protect a soldier for months. And after the war, it got commercialized for farming and other uses. And many today don't know this, but the largest DDT manufacturer was based in Los Angeles for decades. Speaker 5: 31:18 So it was used pretty universally, even in places like farms and home gardens until the 1962 publication of the book silent spring by Rachel Carson. What did she expose? Tell us about the impact of her book. Speaker 10: 31:33 Yeah. Silent spring is like the Rosetta stone for so much of the environmental movement. You know, Rachel Carson, she was a Marine biologist really explained in such simple, powerful words, how chemicals like DDT poisons and ripples across an entire ecosystem, you know, before silent spring concepts that we're pretty familiar with today, like food chains and ecosystems and how the ocean and rivers and our health are all interconnected. These concepts were mindblowing to folks and silent spring really was revolutionary in the sixties and shocked the public into action. Speaker 5: 32:14 So now what kind of damage does DDT do to the ecosystem? Speaker 10: 32:18 Yeah, imagine a tiny, tiny fish or, you know, plankton contaminated with DDT and then a bigger fish eats dozens of those fish. And that fish gets eaten by a bigger fish with gets eaten by top of the food chain, animals like dolphins and Eagles and pelicans. And by the time you're at the top of the food chain, the accumulation of DDT is so significant in your bodies. And DDT takes a really long time to break down like generations. And what makes it pretty unique in a scary way is that the chemical can get passed on to babies. So with the bald Eagles and Falcons and Brown pelicans, the chemical basically led to really thin eggshells and the chicks wouldn't survive. And all of a sudden there were no more birds on our islands, you know, and, you know, as for humans, I think that's a question I hear a lot from readers. We're still figuring out the long-term impacts of having DDT, even in small doses in our bodies for so long and then passing it on to our children. So Speaker 5: 33:21 It was being used from the forties right up until 1972 when the United States banned it. What happened after that? I mean, Montrose chemical in Los Angeles was one of the world's largest producers of this chemical. Right. Did, did they stop producing it after 1972? Speaker 10: 33:38 Yeah. So Congress ultimately ban the use of DDT in the U S in 1972, but other countries were still using it, especially for malaria eradication programs. So the company mantra is chemical kept operating and making DDT in Los Angeles to supply the international demand. And they didn't close down the plant until 1982. Speaker 5: 34:01 It was another, there was a Superfund site of palace Virtus that people knew about. How did that come about? And, and what was done about that? Speaker 10: 34:11 The controversy with Mantrose really came bubbled to the surface when the public, um, discovered years after it shut down that the company was dumping its waste had been dumping its waste through the sewage, which goes straight out into the ocean. So DDT remnants from this waste was making its way out into our waters. And so there was a super fun battle that picked up in the 1990s that was really focused on the sewage dumping. You know, this one particular outfall dumped out about two miles off the palace Verde shore and all the contamination spread across roughly a 17 square mile area that the EPA declared an official hazardous waste cleanup site. And the EPA ultimately reached a settlement with the chemical company, a number of others for $140 million that would go toward clean up and restoration. This, this court battle was massive in the nineties and it's still to this day, one of the largest environmental damage settlements in the country. Speaker 5: 35:12 So millions were spent on the palace Virtus dumping site, but then tell us about David Valentine in your story. You talk about how he stumbled on this other whole problem with DDT further out. Speaker 10: 35:27 Yeah, so interesting. So for decades, we were told and focused on the waste dumping through the sewage and how the palace Verdes shore is like the underwater Superfund site in the country. But David Valentine, a researcher at UC Santa Barbara had heard whispers basically that this chemical company had not only dumped through the sewage, but also in the 1950s taken barrels of their DDT waste out near Catalina and dumped them directly into the ocean. And so in 2011, he had the super awesome deep sea robot on loan for a different research project. But that research mission was way ahead of schedule. So he had some extra time to poke around and when he dropped the robot 3000 feet underwater, he came across these barrels and a lot of them had like punctures in them and they were leaking and it really was an Oh my God moment. Speaker 5: 36:23 So you're saying they were punctured. Why were they punctured? Speaker 10: 36:27 There were some reports that I found in the seventies and eighties that said that basically because the barrels, they didn't sink and they were like floating still because of navigation concerns. They would just take an ax to these barrels and puncture them so that they would sink all the way to the sea floor. This was all stuff that people did back then. Speaker 5: 36:49 It's, it's so disturbing to hear what happened back then. So when Valentine saw these barrels, um, did he get the impression that the stuff was still inside? How far has the stuff spread? Speaker 10: 37:05 Yeah. And so, I mean, because it wasn't an intentionally focused research survey, it was more just, you know, skimming the sea floor with the time that they had with this robot. They were able to identify about 60 barrels and take a couple samples of the sediment. And, you know, they're trying to figure out whether or not the DDT was contained to close to the barrel versus whether it was spreading and based on what they were able to gather in the time that they had all the information and data does show that the it's it's leaking, it's not contained, but how much it's leaking upward up the water column versus staying kind of horizontally down 3000 feet deep under water is still a question that needs to be answered. Speaker 5: 37:51 I mean, what exactly is inside these barrels? Why were they being dumped? Speaker 10: 37:56 Yeah. Doing a bit more research. Um, Veronica, Kevin Anson, one of Dave Valentine's students who studied this for her entire PhD, she had tracked down the patent for what supposedly went into these barrels. And it's basically like an acid sludge, like waste residue from the DDT making process. And her estimates came out to be, you know, each barrel probably contained about 0.5 to 2% DDT. There could be as many as half a million barrels still down there. And at 2% DDT per barrel, the math came out to be like 1500 tons. Total of DDT underwater is still right now from these. Speaker 5: 38:36 So does the us environmental protection agency have anything to say about this? Speaker 10: 38:42 Yeah. So the EPA is in charge of cleaning up the palace or the Superfund site. You know, they've been in charge of this since the mid nineties, early two thousands. And after more than two decades, they're still trying to figure out what to do with that site, which is so much less deep than the 3000 feet deep dumpsite that Dave Valentine and his team just discovered, you know, whether the EPA is going to do anything with this new info is still to be determined. You know, I, when I asked the EPA about the discovery of the barrels, you know, what do you think, what should we do? What do you have to say about this? The agency ultimately declined to comment for the article. Speaker 5: 39:17 You interviewed a Marine scientists, um, Mark gold, who is now governor Newsome's deputy secretary for coastal and ocean policy. What was his reaction to the story? Speaker 10: 39:27 Yeah, Mark gold. He was like the champion of this issue all the way back in the early days when he was the first scientist to heal today. And he's been frustrated with the lack of meaningful progress in the cleanup of the Superfund site. And when I talked to him recently about the barrels, he was, I mean, he was shocked. He said he was shocked. And when he was, you know, he said, when he was helping the EPA and the state build this case against Mantrose back in the 1990s, he said they had all heard rumors about, you know, this other dump site, this other way of disposing of the waste, the deep sea dumping, but there was no hard evidence and no sense of how much was getting dumped and, you know, definitely not half a million barrels. So our, our conversation recently was, you know, pretty remarkable when we were talking about this new information. Speaker 5: 40:19 Have you seen any indication that the problems getting any attention from state or federal agencies? Speaker 10: 40:26 I've definitely been hearing a lot of chatter at the state. I know they're hearing a lot from the public, so I think we're all kind of waiting right now for the dust to settle from the election, but I definitely will be following up with folks and pushing for more information. So stay tuned for updates. We definitely all have a lot more questions to ask. Speaker 5: 40:48 Well, one of the questions I guess, is what could be done about it. I mean, what has been done at the Superfund site and what could be done, uh, to mitigate the damage that was caused by the barrels that have now been uncovered? Speaker 10: 41:00 That's a great question. I mean, I try to ask that to every scientist I talked to and I mean, the super fund site is only 200 only quote, unquote, 200 feet deep. And that's proving to be super complicated to figure out what to do with like the hotspots. And, you know, they tried capping it with a fresh layer of sand and they've tried a number of things. And with the barrels at 3000 feet deep, I mean, I think a lot of folks have when they read this article, they say, we need to get, we need to get them out of the ocean, but it's 3000 feet deep. Imagine bringing up a leaking barrel that is like a shaken up Coke can, you know, up 3000 feet with all the pressure differences. It's just, it's not, that is not a feasible option, but you know, whether or not we can get a more comprehensive survey of like how bad the problem is actually is, you know, how many barrels there actually are? What, what, how much it's leaking and which direction it's leaking and whether or not there are any hotspots. I mean, I think those are all, you know, next step questions that could be studied in a more comprehensive way before we, and then from there we can really figure out what, um, remediation solutions there might be for the barrels down there. Speaker 5: 42:12 And by the way, does the company Montrose that produced the DDT and dumped the virals? Does that company still exist? Could they be held liable? Speaker 10: 42:20 So they are still an ongoing litigation with the EPA. This legal battle has been going on since 1990. And, uh, they just resolved groundwater contamination issues related to the actual plant site near occurrence, uh, back in August. And yeah, they're still in trial over a lot of other elements of the legacy of this DDT operation. You know, when I spoke to the lawyers and ask them for any kind of comment, you know, they basically told me that the ocean damage claims were resolved back in 2000. Speaker 5: 42:59 So just looking ahead here for a moment, I know that apparently some of the species that have been affected the bald Eagles that disappeared have started to return, but, but what is the long-term threat of leaving all of that stuff down there? Speaker 10: 43:15 I mean, that's a question that we're all grappling with, right? Like this is a chemical that takes generations to break down. We don't really know its longterm impacts because we're still living it. We're still in the process of finding out what it means to have a synthetic chemical as bio accumulative, as DDT, continuing to reappear in all these forms and fashions and different Marine mammals and birds and our own bodies. And, you know, ultimately we, the public deserve to know what's out in our oceans and this history. And I think the more we're equipped with clear information and a sense of the scope of the problem, we can actually study it in a meaningful way. And it's just one of the things that I continue to think about is how for so many years scientists who are studying the long, the longer term impacts of the legacy of DDT, didn't even have a clear sense of how much DDT might be in the ocean. Because for so long, we didn't even know about these barrels off of Catalina. Speaker 5: 44:19 Well, Rosanna, thank you for all the work that you've put into uncovering the story. Speaker 10: 44:24 I really appreciate the questions. Thanks so much. Alison, Speaker 5: 44:27 We've been speaking with Rosanna Shaw, who's the environment reporter for the Los Angeles times.