Craig wants hold on arsenic rules
Just months after a new standard took effect to limit levels of arsenic in drinking water, Sen. Larry E. Craig, R-Idaho, will introduce a measure Thursday to suspend enforcement of the rule for small water systems.
Craig spokesman Dan Whiting said a moratorium on civil penalties was needed to ease the financial burden on water systems that serve 10,000 customers or fewer.
The existing standard sets the limit on arsenic, a known carcinogen, to 10 parts per billion in tap water, down from 50 parts per billion.
The Craig measure, an amendment to an energy and water appropriations bill to be voted on by a Senate committee, would also exempt small water systems from complying with rules limiting the amount of byproducts in drinking water from disinfection processes, including chlorination. Those byproducts have been linked to miscarriages and birth defects.
PINE RIDGE, S.D.
Indian activists won’t seize beer
Activists on Wednesday gave up plans to seize beer from motorists driving into the dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation after a tribal police official said it would be illegal and dangerous and promised to help find a different way to fight alcoholism.
Supporters of the blockade had described it as their only option after failed efforts to get the courts and county and state officials to stop the flow of beer from tiny Whiteclay, Neb. Alcohol is banned on the 16,500-member reservation, but four Whiteclay stores sell an estimated 4 million of cans of beer every year, mostly to Native Americans.
Duane Twiss, the reservation’s acting police chief, said it was unclear whether the blockade would violate motorists’ constitutional right against illegal searches and seizures. Allowing the blockade also would invite liability issues, Twiss said. “If someone decides not to stop, we’re going to be responsible.”
LAS VEGAS
Airport shooting called suicide try
A teenager wanted to provoke police to kill him in a suicide attempt when he abducted a child at knifepoint and ran through a security checkpoint at McCarran International Airport, authorities said.
Michael John Allgood, 19, was in critical condition at a Las Vegas hospital on Wednesday, a day after officers shot him in the arm and chest.
Allgood said something immediately after the shooting that “indicates that he made a deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation with an officer to end his life,” said police Capt. Jim Dillon, though he would not elaborate.
Allgood snatched a 3-year-old boy from a toy store near the security checkpoint. Holding the child, he bolted through an exit lane and was met by police inside the security area.
Allgood faces charges of kidnapping with the use of a deadly weapon and felony child endangerment, Dillon said.