PR0535342 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

edit 1 12100 hUp://www.recordnet.com/daily/news/opinions/editorials/editl 12100.html Originally published Tuesday, November 21, 2000 Days finally dwindle for tire fire near Tracy Like a smoldering, black version of the Energizer bunny, the Royster tire fire just keeps on burning. Nearly 28 months after it started, the blaze may soon be doused. The California Integrated Waste Management Board has finally released funds for the first phase of a cleanup project. That could mean the fire will truly be a dying ember by Christmas. We can only hope. When the 7 million tires on South MacArthur Drive outside Tracy started burning in August 1998, they became a flashpoint for a longstanding problem: what to do with rubber piles up and down the state filled with millions of discard tires. Thankfully, California has come up with a long-term solution. Beginning Jan. 1, there will be a $1 fee attached to every new tire sold. That means $6.5 million annually for tire-pile cleanup. From an environmental standpoint, we all better hope it works. You'll have to pardon the skip in the step of Richard Johnson, Aaron Martin, Mychael James, Rebecca Frank and Chris Santos. They're a different kind of Fab Five, members of Delta College's first-place-in-the-nation engineering team. That's impressive enough until you understand their competition: four-year colleges and universities from all across the country and one finalist team from India. Delta is no stranger to the competition, but this is its first championship. The challenge this year was to create a machine that, by one touch of a button, can fill up a one-liter plastic container with liquid and then screw on a cap. Oh yeah, the device also had to fit into a 30-by-30-by-50-centimeter box and be assembled in two minutes. No sweat for the community-college quintet from Stockton, beating the likes of University of Wisconsin and Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the final round. The value of teamwork I of 2 11/21/2000 8:43 PM