The State - News from March 10, 1988

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is making plans to scrape the San Luis Drain canal free of selenium-tainted muds and place the sludge in a disposal pit at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge. Susan Hoffman, Kesterson cleanup project manager, says bureau officials think it will make more economic sense to go ahead and dredge the 82-mile canal of 211,000 cubic yards of poisoned mud at the same time a similar cleanup is under way at Kesterson. Bids on the Kesterson cleanup were opened Monday, and a contractor will be selected within 30 days. Hoffman said $14.3 million to clean the San Luis Drain has been placed in the bureau budget for the next three years. The drain delivered farm waste water from Westlands Water District to Kesterson between 1978 and 1986. The California Department of Health Services classified the sediments at Kesterson as hazardous but granted a variance allowing them to be treated as designated wastes, which require less stringent disposal methods.