I was going to go for the obvious today and tell you why fireworks are bad for the environment. But you already know that, right? It's a story that involves our old nemesis, perchlorate, and people who would dare to ask for an environmental assessment of year-round fireworks at a marine life park.
But I was stopped short by Susan Sward's story in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, a gripping tale of how a California woman battled the chemical company that was poisoning her High Desert town. Read it here, and catch Part 2 on Monday.
For reasons we're all too familiar with, this kind of investigative story is becoming the exception, rather than the norm, in the U.S. newspaper business, as publishers keep slashing staff and news space in what seems to be a never-ending spiral. (Sward's story appeared the same week the LA Times announced it was cutting 150 people from the newsroom.) For a newspaper-phile like myself, almost as interesting as Sward's story was the note about how she got it:
ABOUT THE SERIESRita Smith first called The Chronicle wanting to tell her story in 2002. She told an editorial assistant who answered the phone that her husband, a former chemical plant worker, was very sick after working at a plant in the San Bernardino County town of Trona in the Mojave Desert. She said thousands of birds had died near the plant - then named IMC Chemicals Inc. The details were sketchy.
The notes taken by the editorial assistant were passed on to Chronicle reporter Susan Sward. Over the next few years, Sward listened to Smith tell bits and pieces of her story over the phone, and more than a year ago, Sward began pursuing the story.
During her investigation, Sward interviewed more than 100 people - plant supervisors, former and current plant workers, some of their families, regulators, scientists, professors and Trona residents. She traveled twice to Trona. She asked the company dozens of questions about its operations. The company, now named Searles Valley Minerals, responded with hundreds of pages of detailed answers.
Good for Susan Sward. Good for the Chronicle. And good for Rita Smith.