216 drivers ticketed in school zones
Law enforcement officers wrote 216 tickets Thursday to drivers speeding in Spokane school zones during a planned emphasis patrol.
Officers from the Spokane Police Department, Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and Washington State Patrol worked six school zones: Rogers, Lewis and Clark and Ferris high schools and Garfield, Wilson and Logan elementary schools.
In addition to the speeding tickets, officers also wrote citations for a suspended driver, a person driving without a valid license, eight people not wearing their seat belts and one for a child not properly secured in a vehicle.
– Jody Lawrence-Turner
Boise
Idaho Senata against selling public land
The Idaho Senate voted 34-1 on Thursday to send a message to Congress opposing any significant sell-off of Idaho’s federal lands – like the current Bush administration proposal to sell 26,000 acres in Idaho to raise money.
“This is about an issue that is very precious to us here in Idaho,” Senate Majority Caucus Chair Brad Little, R-Emmett, told the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, added, “I’d like to think that this is just a half-baked, crazy idea from some guys back east that don’t know what our public lands mean to us.”
Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, the Senate resources chairman, joined Stennett and Little in sponsoring the memorial, SJM 120.
The only “no” vote came from Rep. Monty Pearce, R-New Plymouth: “The federal government is the worst manager of our public lands. We see fires, we see mismanagement in every way.”
The measure now moves to the House.
– Betsy Z. Russell
Yakima
Hanford waste plant builder being fined
The company building a massive waste-treatment plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation – a project mired in cost overruns and delays – is being fined $198,000 for violating nuclear safety requirements, the Department of Energy announced Thursday.
The fine is the latest in a series of problems with the project that has subjected both contractor Bechtel National and the Energy Department to criticism in recent months.
The plant, billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, will convert millions of gallons of radioactive waste into glasslike logs for permanent disposal. The waste now is stored in leaking underground tanks near the Columbia River.
The Hanford site was created in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.
The preliminary notice of violation, announced Thursday in an Energy Department news release, targets problems that occurred between 2002 and 2005, including failure to abide by design codes for building safety requirements, failure to abide by inspection requirements for waste-processing tanks, failure to use correct suppliers to build certain parts and calculation errors resulting in inconsistencies in structural steel design requirements.
If left uncorrected, the problems could have posed “potential safety and health risks to workers and the public,” the release said.
– Associated Press