[CPEO-MEF] A boost for water cleanup?

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California
A boost for water cleanup?
PERCHLORATE: An empty rocket casing may help Rialto obtain funds to
decontaminate wells.
02/21/2003
By ELLEN BRAUNSTEIN
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

RIALTO - The five-foot tall rocket casing, possibly hidden for decades
in a school storage closet, could be the smoking propellant -- the key
to who will pay up for contaminating Rialto's water wells with the
rocket fuel chemical perchlorate, city officials say.

The empty rocket casing, manufactured by B.F. Goodrich Corp. in north
Rialto in 1961, is an industrial artifact propped next to carriage
trunks and family scrapbooks at the Rialto Historical Society museum.

A Kelley Elementary School maintenance worker donated the dusty test
rocket shell to the museum after finding it underneath a school stage
during a routine termite inspection in mid-January.

On Thursday, city officials confiscated the rocket shell from the museum
and took it to the evidence room of the Rialto Police Department.

One look at the identifying serial number on the rocket and city Public
Works Director Brad Baxter saw the potential for millions of federal
dollars coming to Rialto to strip perchlorate from city wells.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.pe.com/localnews/sanbernardino/stories/PE_NEWS_nbrockt21.f376.html

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