Report: California fails to keep track of toxic waste

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Podcasts Take Two

Nov 19, 2013

Listen • 7:12

Report: California fails to keep track of toxic waste

The Los Angeles Times published an investigative piece this week that highlights enormous flaws in how the state tracks toxic waste. This is how big the problem is: 174,000 tons of waste has gone missing over the last five years.

A Hazardous Materials (HazMat) team use bio-toxin detectors as they walk past actors portraying civilians injured in a terrorist attack, during 'Golden Guardian,' California's annual full scale Homeland Security exercise, 14 November 2006 at the Hyundai Pavilion amphitheater in San Bernardino, California.

The Los Angeles Times published an investigative piece this week that highlights enormous flaws in how the state tracks toxic waste. This is how big the problem is: 174,000 tons of waste has gone missing over the last five years.

California has some of the toughest hazardous waste laws in the country, which makes this next story even more astonishing than it would have been anyway.

The Los Angeles Times published an investigative piece this week that highlights enormous flaws in how the state tracks toxic waste. This is how big the problem is: 174,000 tons of waste has gone missing over the last five years. Nobody knows what happened to it.

Los Angeles Times reporter Jessica Garrison joins the show to explain.