On 20 Jan 2003 12:19:42 -0800, (Steve Coyle)
wrote:

Odd about this whole thing, is how quickly the city acted to shut down
for ninety days on the basis of the Austin American Statesman news
paper report. Why not two weeks or six months, with what little they
know I don't know how they can pick a specific time frame. More
realistic it would seem, would be closing the springs until tests came
back to see if closing the springs were actually necessary.
Obviously the big fear on the City's part would be litigation. It
always kills me listening to talk radio discussing payments the city
makes to settle suits, instead of simply saying how much are you and I
going to fork over in each case.
I am curious, and I have no evidence on this, I'm just
speculating but I'm curious, if this closing due to 'toxic' waste, is
a fortuitous chance to save the city money considering the budget
shortfall that are a recent and big problem.

I would also certainly like to know what the city parks department
has been using to fertilize the grass on the hill and the area above.
There has been a lot of discussion about the toxicity of Ironite,
being the tailings from an abamdoned silver mine in Humbolt Arizona
but it is not the only commercially available fertilizer that uses
industrial toxic waste 'recycled' as fertilizer. ( Anyone interested
in this can read 'Fateful Harvest' by journalist Duff Wilson. )

take care'
Steve Coyle
www.austingardencenter.com

My reading of the AAS article was that the city, having been shown the
data obtained by the AAS, immediately ordered their own tests (on or
about 10 Jan, as I recall) and then acted when their tests strongly
confirmed the AAS specimens. So from my reading, they did not act
only on the information provided by the AAS. On the other hand, they
apparently ignored about a decades worth of their own data that
strongly suggested something was amiss.