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Technology giant Google has entered a lease agreement with Merced County to use 60 acres of land at Castle Commerce Center to help develop the company’s self-driving car technology, the Sun-Star has learned.
Google officials confirmed the lease agreement Friday morning after speculation about who was going to be using the property at Castle. In late December, the Board of Supervisors approved the lease agreement with Google.
It wasn’t immediately clear until Friday that Google was behind the project because the company is listed in the lease agreement document under the name LRC Engineering LLC.
Katelin Jabbari, Google spokeswoman, confirmed her company will be using the Castle site. “It’s a nice space, and we’re happy to be there,” Jabbari said.
Regarding Google’s self-driving car technology, Jabbari also wrote in an email: “We’ve successfully driven in self-driving mode across a wide variety of terrain and road conditions — including a loop around Lake Tahoe and through the Santa Cruz Mountains — and we’re very pleased with the technology’s performance.”
“We’re continuing to develop and refine the technology in a variety of environments, including closed tracks where we can set up challenging courses and obstacles — and the space available to us at Castle is very helpful for that,” Jabbari added.
Mark Hendrickson, director of community and economic development, said the site, referred to as Building 175, includes the old flight simulator facility from the property’s days as Castle Air Force Base.
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Back in 2009 Google and a group of partners formed the Measurement Lab (M-Lab) platform, an open project of distributed servers meant to help researchers gauge just how well an internet connection is working, and conversely help customers determine if their ISP is blocking or throttling particular applications.
The group has been hosting the Glasnost test for a while, developed by the Max Planck Institute, which uses a Java applet to compare your regular download speed and the performance of different application flows between your host and their measurement servers. Though anyone can check their own connection, the M-Lab’s latest report offers an interesting general look at the state of ISP throttling around the globe.
As reported by TorrentFreak, the group compiled tests performed between December 2012 and December 2013, and listed throttling percentages for every country where at least 100 tests were performed.
Click headline to read more and view chart--
Ever since their emergence within the political landscape, Pirates have been perceived by Greens both as rivals for voters’ support and potential allies in a common cause.
The Pirate movement has articulated its distinctive political vision and, in several countries, succeeded in creating a new constituency of voters.
Whereas on the level of national politics in various countries Pirates pose for the Greens more or less of a challenge, in the European Parliament, they work together, on a daily basis, on issues such as data protection, network security or intellectual property reform.
Is it a result of a contingent overlapping of Green and Pirate agendas, or is it a sign of a deeper affinity, or complementarity, between the two movements?
Adam Ostolki interviewed me on the topic above:
Click headline to read the interview--
The battle over online privacy, and how personal data should be treated as it moves over the Internet, is being fought between the US and EU points of view in multiple ways.
There is the EU's Data Protection Regulation, currently grinding its way through the legislative process; there are the discussions about the NSA's spying program, and how it impacts Europeans; and finally, there are various court cases involving US companies and the personal data of EU citizens.
One of these is in the UK, where The Telegraph reports that an important decision has been handed down:
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This was a big year for digital health transformation, especially for advances in personalized and connected care. Looking back at 2013, these are the four trends that will ultimately have the greatest impact on the future. Many will remember 2013 as the year when mobile health apps and sensors took off. The experts will oversee mobile medical apps that are used as an accessory to regulated medical device (e.g. an app enabling health care professionals to view medical images on an iPad and make a diagnosis) and mobile apps that transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device (e.g. a mobile app that turns a smartphone into an ECG).
Big Data ecosystem in health care
The massive growth of the volume, velocity, and variety of digital health data creates both manageability issues and opportunities for greater patient insights. Many learned in 2013 that harnessing the power of Big Data can be costly. Organizations must hire skilled software engineers and analysts as well as purchase and maintain new infrastructures to effectively handle Big Data. This year’s insights and successful failures have prompted organizations to invest, a first step on the road to delivering personalized health solutions. Sustained planning and execution through thoughtful applications development, storage, analytics/visualization, and data exchange strategies are what will ultimately help organizations unlock their Big Data value.
Although genomics remains in its early stages, it can exponentially explode. Finding a way to successfully manage Big Insights to eventually “predict, personalize, and prevent,” could lead to early detection of potential problems, which means healthier members, as well as fewer complications and admissions.
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Planning experts and economists have warned that the world is about to be confronted with a global food crisis unlike anything it has encountered before. Unbridled population increase combined with longer life expectancies, land conversion, biofuel production and a shrinking agriculture sector exacerbated by rising oil prices and climate change may lead to food shortages and spiraling food prices at a global scale. Within this milieu, e-Agriculture and its emphasis on information and communication technologies and applications in the agricultural sector have been perceived as irrelevant. Not many are aware that the answer to the impending global food crisis may be found in e-Agriculture. Bringing CoPs to the next level: Communities of Champions(CoCs)
The problems that confront e-Agriculture nowadays are to a scale that often requires policy interventions, not technological solutions. CoPs must now delve into the policy process and progress into Communities of Champions or CoCs. From CoIs that share information and CoPs that share solutions, e-Agriculture must move into CoCs that mobilize sectors through information, knowledge and advocacy. Click headline to read more--
We've seen before that the USTR's infatuation with copyright and patent maximalism is both unsettling and dangerous to the economy. But at times it just gets bizarre. The USTR's latest report to Congress about China obviously lists "intellectual property" enforcement as a "top priority" because that's what the USTR always does. Of course, as we've pointed out in the past, China seems to understand intellectual property a hell of a lot better than US officials. That is, it recognizes that intellectual property is a form of control and a type of trade barrier -- and every time the US pushes it to upgrade its enforcement or "respect" for intellectual property, it should come as no surprise that the end result is China punishing US companies while favoring Chinese ones.
And, ridiculously, the USTR continues to play right into the hands of Chinese officials on this front, who must be laughing maniacally every time they see the USTR release one of these reports, giving them even more ammo to slap American companies and promote their own.
But, the USTR report gets even more ridiculous the deeper you read. Matthew Rimmer noticed an insane little tidbit on page 112, in which the USTR talks about how it encourages China to do "spot checks" on libraries to make sure they're obeying US copyright law. I'm not kidding.
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Google’s acquisition of Nest Labs Inc. is puzzling. It’s nice that Nest is about reinventing previously “unloved things” like thermostats and smoke detectors. But is it really worth $3.2 billion? To put it into context, assuming a 20% profit margin (Nest’s profits are opaque and will remain so as a subsidiary to Google), selling a $250 Nest thermostat to all 132 million U.S. households comes out to $33 billion in revenue and $6.6 billion in profits. So, you break even only if you sell to about 50% of all homes in the United States. This seems unlikely. Of course there is also scope for increased market share internationally, but this will take time. Plus, unlike the iPhone, after someone buys a Nest, they aren’t going to upgrade every 18 months.
Google is a smart company. So what is their angle? How will Google monetize Nest? We think the answer is data. Remember, Google is a media company. They sell ads. For most of its revenue, Google doesn’t sell the “thing”, it sells to sellers a way to find buyers. Nest data will help it do this. The $250 you pay for a Nest thermostat is only a small part of a much larger stream you spend on electricity, natural gas, and all the appliances in your home that use this energy.
Nest data give Google a strategic advantage in these other markets, immediately creating opportunities for selling targeted advertising for companies that operate in this space. In some ways, targeting will be straightforward. If 19 Pine St. has its air conditioner on three times as often as 21 Pine St., Google can suggest a local air conditioning repair specialist or salesperson. A new central air conditioner can cost thousands of dollars, so it is reasonable to think that local retailers would be willing-to-pay substantial amounts for these connections. And it is not just air conditioners. Google can sell targeted advertising for furnaces, roof and wall insulation, energy-efficient windows, and other parts of the building shell.
In fact, Nest data can allow Google to perform a complete audit of the energy used in your home for cooling and heating. This is not as good as an in-home energy audit, but it also is much less expensive.
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A committee of the European Parliament has almost unanimously voted through net neutrality proposals that had been proposed by digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes – but not without some amendments that seriously tighten up the language. For the most part, these changes will please net neutrality advocates (who are in any case getting their first European net neutrality legislation here).
As the text now stands (see the amendments embedded below), it looks very much like ISPs and content providers have lost the explicit right — included in the original proposals — to strike deals between one another for “specialized services”. This doesn’t mean they can’t strike deals, but it does mean that ability is not entrenched in Europe-wide law. The amendments also place stricter conditions on the deals that can be struck.
It also appears that there will be stricter limitations on how internet traffic can be shaped or limited – only for transient network congestion and specific court orders, and not for crime-fighting or at the whim of the national government. (That said, sources in the legislative process have suggested to me that the original text in fact included fewer loopholes than now exist.)
In a statement on Thursday, Kroes welcomed the 35-1 vote by the Internal Market and Consumer Rights (IMCO) committee”, but said she and her team would “need to assess in more detail whether the actual amendments provide in all cases enough legal certainty to meet our shared objectives.”
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A proposal to build a $150 million biomass wood-burning plant in East Springfield remains under litigation in two courts, with one hearing scheduled in March on a developer’s fight to obtain two building permits.
The developer, Palmer Renewable Energy, that filed suit against the city and the Zoning Board of Appeals in March of 2011, is scheduled for a hearing on March 17, in Land Court in Boston.
The board of appeals had overturned the two first-stage building permits for the biomass project two years ago, leading to the lawsuit in Land Court. Palmer Renewable Energy is proposing the 35-megawatt, wood-to-energy plant on the grounds of the Palmer Paving Co. property near the intersection of Page Boulevard and Cadwell Drive.
The building commissioner issued the permits for the project, but the Board of Appeals overturned that action as petitioned by the City Council and three residents.
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In Louisiana, they understand how nature and the not-so-natural can hit the coast. Hurricane Katrina. The BP oil spill. Sea level rise and coastal erosion across the Louisiana waterfront. When Katrina hit, it looked like Louisiana’s problem.
When Superstorm Sandy hit the most populated coastline in America we saw it as everybody’s problem. Here in New Orleans, they’re just a little ahead of the rest of the country in thinking it through.
This hour On Point: we’re with a live audience in New Orleans thinking about the great American coastline, and how it will change.
Click headline to listen to this OnPoint Radio segment, read about the guest and access hot links to Tom Ashbrook's suggested reading list--
If President Obama uses his State of the Union address to launch a major push for the “Fast Track” authority that would allow his trade representatives to avoid congressional input and oversight as they negotiate a sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, he will need new allies to generate support around the country.
The president won’t be able to look to organized labor. Unions are overwhelmingly opposed to a deal that Communications Workers of America posters refer to as “NAFTA on Steroids.”
The president won’t be able to look to major environmental organizations. The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and other green groups are outspoken in their opposition.
The president won’t be able to look to progressive farm groups. The National Farmers Union is explicitly opposed to using a “Fast Track” approach that would allow trade agreements to move through Congress with limited debate and without amendments.
In fact, if Obama decides to ramp up his advocacy for a free-trade strategy that progressive Americans tend to see as a threat to workers, farmers, the environment, human rights and democracy, he won’t be able to count on many traditional allies to stir up grassroots support in the states. That's one of the reasons why there remains considerable uncertainty about whether the president really will -- in a speech that is expected to focus on income equality -- spend substantial time talking up a trade agenda that has drawn broad opposition from House and Senate Democrats and so much of his base.
If the president does go all in for the TPP, he will find himself in strange company -- with groups that promote policies that critics argue are responsible for the growing gap between a wealthy few and an increasingly impoverished many.
There is, for instance, one group that maintains an extensive network of political connections in states across the country and is enthusiastically on board for “the expedited conclusions and approval of the TPP.”
That group is the American Legislative Exchange Council.
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More crude oil was spilled in U.S. rail incidents in 2013 than in the previous 37 years combined, a data analysis shows. OilPrice.com reports: The data suggests that in 2013 more than 1.15 million gallons of crude oil was spilled from rail cars. This includes the major derailment in Aliceville, Alabama on the 8th of November when 748,800 gallons spilt as the train derailed in a swampy area and burst into flames, but not yet the derailment in Casselton, North Dakota 30th of December, for which the PHMSA have yet to receive data, although it is estimated to be in the region of 400,000 gallons. Nor does this figure include spills that occurred in Canada, where the 6th of July derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec spilled an estimated 1.5 million plus gallons of crude oil. In contrast to 2013, the total crude oil spilled from 1975, when federal records began, to 2012 was 800,000 gallons. In fact in eight of those years not one drop of crude oil was spilt, and in five only one gallon or less was spilt. The increase noted last year is due to the fact delivering oil by rail has become a much more popular choice of transport as pipeline capacity has been unable to keep pace with the increases in oil production during the North American shale boom. The Association of American Railroads has estimated that 400,000 carloads of crude oil were shipped last year, and with each car holding 28,800 gallons that totals more than 11.5 billion gallons. Click headline to read more--
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The government and the industry will spend about Rs 500 crore for creating workforce of 5 lakh professionals skilled in cyber security domain in the next five years, a senior government official said today.
"It can't be only government-led programme. Some part of the budget will come from government, some from industry. The overall budget is going to be about Rs 500 crore and at the end of fifth year we will have 500,000 cyber security experts," CERT-in director general Gulshan Rai said at an event here. He was referring to government's targets envisaged under the National Cyber Security Policy, 2013, while innaugurating a cybersecurity education and research centre at the institute.
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A viral pathogen that typically infects plants has been found in honeybees and could help explain their decline. Researchers working in the U.S. and Beijing, China report their findings in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
The routine screening of bees for frequent and rare viruses "resulted in the serendipitous detection of Tobacco Ringspot Virus, or TRSV, and prompted an investigation into whether this plant-infecting virus could also cause systemic infection in the bees," says Yan Ping Chen from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, an author on the study.
"The results of our study provide the first evidence that honeybees exposed to virus-contaminated pollen can also be infected and that the infection becomes widespread in their bodies," says lead author Ji Lian Li, at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science in Beijing.
"We already know that honeybees, Apis melllifera, can transmit TRSV when they move from flower to flower, likely spreading the virus from one plant to another," Chen adds.
Notably, about 5% of known plant viruses are pollen-transmitted and thus potential sources of host-jumping viruses. RNA viruses tend to be particularly dangerous because they lack the 3'-5' proofreading function which edits out errors in replicated genomes. As a result, viruses such as TRSV generate a flood of variant copies with differing infective properties.
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India has several private educational institutions but none that are world standard or even attempting to be so. Government restrictions on operations prevent the truly-ambitious– from an academic viewpoint – from investing in education. At least two wealthy individuals in India have plans to invest $1 billion each to create world-class private universities, but they are holding off for reasons that are not hard to understand. As competition from emerging countries is on the rise for the Indian information technology (IT) industry, it is time to improve the sector, said President Pranab Mukherjee. “Though India has an important position in the global IT and IT-enabled services, its prominence is being challenged by new emerging economies. We have to therefore, improve the competitiveness of this sector,” he said. “Research and development (R&D) is the basic constituent of promoting innovation. The culture of research needs to be further augmented. Only about 6,000 patent applications were filed by Indians in 2010, which is a mere 0.3 per cent of the total applications filed in the world. India spends only 0.9 per cent of GDP on R&D whereas China spends about 1.2 per cent, the UK 1.7 per cent and Israel 4.3 per cent,” he said. Click headline to read more--
Remarks
Ambassador Daniel A. Sepulveda
Deputy Assistant Secretary and U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Washington, DC
January 23, 2014
Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation to help frame and initiate the discussion that the experts on the panel will conduct. It is an impressive panel with folks that have lived through the more than decade long debate over Internet governance, what it means, and where it is headed. I am familiar with their work and it helps inform my own.
Let me start at the end and work my way backwards. Last week, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and I visited Mexico to conduct a series of meetings on bilateral and multilateral technology and telecommunications issues. In the process we took the opportunity to visit with a group of young entrepreneurs who were using technology and the global Internet as a platform for developing new businesses using the assistance and guidance provided to them at Telefonica’s tech accelerator, an organization called WAYRA.
As government officials, we were the only people in the room wearing suits and we raised the average age somewhat, but we were thrilled to see what was happening and what these young Mexican entrepreneurs were doing. They were working on innovative ways to link parents with teachers, retailers with customers and doctors with patients. The ideas were innovative, the energy was high, and the enthusiasm boundless.
As public servants, those of us in this Administration work with our friends and colleagues at home and abroad to create a legal and regulatory framework domestically and internationally that enables the kind of optimism and pursuit of happiness that we saw at Wayra in Mexico.
Underlying the capacity of those young people to innovate and reach the world without having to jump through regulatory hoops or ask anyone for permission are two concepts U.S. policymakers and others seek to preserve – an open Internet, governed by a broad range of decision makers, including industry, government and civil society and free-market competition in telecommunications networks.
The subject of this panel is (1) how to understand and help evolve the framework of Internet governance to increase the inclusion of those who feel that they are left out and (2) how to defend the concepts of diffuse, multistakeholder governance from challenges to its legitimacy and from efforts to change the way the Internet operates in a manner that would make it harder for those young people in Mexico -- and others in the world like them – to succeed.
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Back in December, we wrote about a legal action that a group of digital rights activists had brought against GCHQ, alleging that the UK's mass online surveillance programs have breached the privacy of tens of millions of people across the UK and Europe. In an unexpected turn of events, the court involved -- the European Court of Human Rights -- has put the case in the fast lane:
The court has completed its preliminary examination of the case and has communicated it to the British government, asking it to justify how GCHQ's practices and the current system of oversight comply with the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention. The court has also given the case a rare 'priority' designation. The government now has until 2 May to respond, after which the case will move into the final stages before judgment.
Any hopes the UK government may have had that the case would amble slowly through the legal system until people had forgotten about it have now been dashed. Moreover, it has been put on the spot by the court, which has asked a very specific question about how the UK government thinks it can square mass surveillance with the European right to privacy. It will be interesting to see how the UK responds. Nor is this the only legal challenge to GCHQ's activities.
In the December post, we reported that Amnesty International was using the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal to argue that spying on communications breaches the UK's Human Rights Act. Now we learn it has been joined by two others groups -- one from inside, the other from outside the UK:
Click headline to read more--
The process of restoring communications after a major fire last eekend in Lærdal, an area of several thousand people on Norway's west coast, has begun in earnest. While thankfully no one died in the fire, a number of buildings were destroyed, including one owned by Norway's largest telco Telenor, reduced to ashes by the blaze.
This building was the main communication hub both for the Lærdal region itself and some of its neighbouring municipalities. "The building contained all the telecoms equipment for fixed-line telephony and internet in Lærdal, a 2G/3G base station and connections to 15 base stations further downstream, and the main fibre backhaul connections," Bjørn Amundsen, director head of coverage at Telenor, told ZDNet.
"At the most, 15 of our base stations in Lærdaland surrounding municipalities were down, 454 fixed-line customers in Lærdal and three other villages were disconnected, and some hundred subscribers lost their internet connections," he added.
"The situation was critical right away, as the local crisis management teams needed communications. In addition, a lot of other critical and important services that rely on communications also needed our immediate action," he added.
Other telcos were also affected: Netcom, Telenor's main rival in Norway, rents fibre backbone capacity on Telenor's backhaul in Lærdal. As a result, Netcom lost connection to 14 of its base stations in the same area. "We didn't lose any equipment in the fire, but connections to all of our base stations were gone," Tommy Johansen, head of coverage at Netcom, told ZDNet.
Click headline to read more--
South Korea, already one of the most wired countries on earth, Wednesday announced a 1.6 trillion won ($1.5 billion) plan to roll out a next-generation 5G wireless service quick enough to download full-length films in a second.
The science ministry said it aims to implement the technology -- about 1,000 times faster than the 4G services currently available -- within six years.
"We helped fuel national growth with 2G services in the 1990s, 3G in the 2000s and 4G around 2010. Now it is time to take preemptive action to develop 5G," the ministry said in a statement.
"Countries in Europe, China and the US are making aggressive efforts to develop 5G technology ... and we believe there will be fierce competition in this market in a few years," it said.
Under the roadmap, a trial 5G service will be rolled out in 2017 and a fully commercial service in December 2020.
Priority will be given to developing key features for the new network, including Ultra-HD and hologram transmission as well as cutting-edge social networking services.
Related industries will be able to rack up sales of 5G-related devices and infrastructure equipment worth 331 trillion won from 2020 to 2026, the ministry estimated.
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A project at the Stop & Shop Distribution Center in Freetown to convert spoiled food to energy has been given the green light by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The project will build a 12,000-square-foot facility to house an anaerobic digester at Stop & Shop's location on South Main Street in Assonet.
There, the digester will use bacteria to convert food waste into gas that can then be burned as fuel.
The Freetown Planning Board and Conservation Commission unanimously approved the project in December.
On Thursday, the state provided the project with the required permits to move forward.
"It is an innovative project that ... keeps with Massachusetts' goal of diverting organic materials from landfills and incinerators," DEP Spokesman Joe Ferson said.
Once complete, the facility is predicted to process an average of 95 tons per day of unsold food product and produce 1.137 megawatts of electrical power. (For comparison, Fairhaven's turbines are each 1.5 megawatts.)
The facility is expected to provide up to 40 percent of the distribution center's on-site electrical power needs.
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Whenever the topic of plant-derived biofuels is raised, the issue of turning valuable arable land over to the task of growing feedstock is generally not far behind. A discovery by the Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SRBC) that desert plants fed by seawater can produce biofuel more efficiently than other well-known feedstocks could help alleviate such concerns.
The SRBC, which is affiliated with the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, is receiving funding from Boeing, Etihad Airways and Honeywell UOP to develop and commercialize a sustainable biofuel that emits 50 to 80 percent less carbon through its lifecycle than fossil fuels. Plants called halophytes, which are highly salt tolerant, could be the answer.
SRBC researchers found that halophyte seeds contain oil suitable for biofuel production and that the entire shrub-like plant can be turned into biofuel more effectively than many other feedstocks.
Click headline to read more--
Members of Congress from coastal states including Massachusetts are banding together across party lines to respond to a rising tide of constituent complaints and reverse increases in federal flood insurance premiums mandated by a bill passed in 2012.
Massachusetts lawmakers have been vocal in their call for action: Representative John F. Tierney called the increases “extremely concerning.” Representative William R. Keating said homeowners who have lived in coastal communities for generations could now be forced to move. And Senator Edward J. Markey warned the higher premiums could close homes and businesses.
But for all the alarm members of the Massachusetts delegation are sounding, they are partly to blame. The entire state delegation in 2012, including eight of the members who are in office today, voted for the rate increases, along with most other Washington lawmakers.
At the time, Congress wanted to impose fiscal discipline on a costly federal government program that provides insurance in flood-prone areas, where private-market insurance is unavailable or too costly.
But reducing the government subsidies is saddling property owners in Massachusetts and around the country with average premium increases of 25 percent — adding hundreds, and in some cases, thousands, of dollars to annual costs.
The Senate could vote this month on a measure to restore the full subsidies and delay the increases for another four years. House Speaker John Boehner has said he does not support a full reversal, but is willing to entertain changes.
In the shorter term, a provision in a $1 trillion budget bill negotiated in Congress and signed by President Obama on Friday night would postpone some of the increases until Sept. 30.
Click headline to read more--
Federal nuclear regulators found five security-related violations at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station located in Plymouth, MA on Cape Cod Bay during a routine inspection last month.
Two of those had been spotted by inspectors as long ago as 2012 but the shortcomings had yet to be addressed.
On Thursday, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan characterized the number of infractions found in this latest inspection as high.
It isn't uncommon for plants to receive multiple "green" or "low security significance" inspection findings, "but five is above the normal average," Sheehan said.
For two of the violations, the NRC issued written notices to Entergy Nuclear Operations, the plant's owner and operator, for failing "to correct long-standing equipment deficiencies important to station security defense ... within a reasonable amount of time," according to the NRC letter.
The deficiencies dated back to November 2012.
The company was issued "noncited violation" notices for two of the others, which require Entergy to correct the problems or face enforcement action.
While federal regulators won't specifically discuss findings related to security, the two were described as related to "human performance."
Click headline to read more--
Federal and state investigators learned Tuesday that an additional chemical that wasn't previously identified was in the tank that leaked Jan. 9 at the Freedom Industries tank farm, just upstream from West Virginia American Water's regional drinking water intake.
The company told investigators that the Crude MCHM that leaked also contained a product called "PPH," according to state and federal officials.
State officials said late Tuesday that, after consulting with West Virginia American Water Co., they believe the water company's Elk River plant would likely have removed the chemical from drinking water during its normal treatment process. Additional testing of some of the original water samples from the first days after the incident is being conducted to confirm that, officials said.
"We have to go back and confirm things and make sure we're doing our due diligence for public health," said Gen. James Hoyer of the West Virginia National Guard, who has a team that's been heading water testing efforts following the leak.
Laura Jordan, spokeswoman for West Virginia American Water, said Tuesday night that the company "described in detail our water treatment process with state chemical experts, who ascertained that our current treatment process would likely have removed this chemical.
"We are also testing water samples collected last week to further confirm this and will share those results when available," Jordan said in an emailed statement.
Click headline to read more--
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