Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 17, 2011

Nature & The Environment

9

 Mountain Views News Saturday, September 17, 2011 

U.S. EPA ORDERS $20 MILLION NORTHROP CLEANUP 
AT SAN GABRIEL VALLEY SUPERFUND SITE -

Groundwater contaminated by 

former Benchmark Technology facility


CARL STRUYCKEN:

Leaning Towards the Paleolithic

by Christopher Nyerges

Nyerges is the author of “How to Survive Anywhere,” and other books. His podcast appears 
weekly on Preparedness Radio Network, and his blogs appear at HYPERLINK “http://www.
christophernyerges.com/” \o “http://www.christophernyerges.com/” www.ChristopherNyerges.
com. He can be reached at Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041

LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency has ordered Northrop 
Grumman Systems Corporation to spend an 
estimated $20 million to build a groundwater 
cleanup system to address groundwater 
contamination stemming primarily from the 
former Benchmark Technology facility in the 
City of Industry, Calif., located within the San 
Gabriel Valley Superfund Sites.

Formerly located at 200 South Turnbull Canyon 
Road, the Benchmark Technology facility is one of 
the largest sources of volatile organic compound 
groundwater contamination in the Puente Valley 
area of the Superfund site. Northrop Grumman 
will install wells and a treatment plant to contain 
and treat groundwater contaminated by VOCs 
and 1,4-dioxane. The treated water will then 
be discharged back to surface water or injected 
back into the underground aquifer, providing 
additional water resources to San Gabriel Valley 
residents.

“Today’s order will protect the essential 
drinking water supplies in the San Gabriel Valley. 
The treatment system is designed to intercept the 
most highly contaminated groundwater plume 
and prevent it from migrating further.” said 
Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator 
for the Pacific Southwest. “Once again, EPA is 
taking action requiring the company responsible 
for the pollution to pay for its cleanup in Puente 
Valley.” 

Northrop Grumman has already spent over $10 
million implementing cleanup activities at the 
former Benchmark Technology facility through 
a facility-specific Cleanup and Abatement Order 
issued by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality 
Control Board in 1989. The Water Board has 
agreed to transfer lead oversight to EPA in order 
to better coordinate the three groundwater 
cleanup projects currently ongoing in the Puente 
Valley. The other two projects are the shallow 
zone remedial action north of Puente Creek and 
the intermediate zone remedial action. Northrop 
Grumman is also performing the intermediate 
zone remedial action under a 2009 consent 
decree with EPA. 

The contaminated groundwater associated 
with all of the San Gabriel Valley sites lies under 
significant portions of Alhambra, Irwindale, La 
Puente, Rosemead, Azusa, Baldwin Park, City 
of Industry, El Monte, South El Monte, West 
Covina, and other areas of the San Gabriel Valley. 
There are 45 water suppliers in the Valley that 
use the San Gabriel Basin groundwater aquifer to 
provide 90 percent of the drinking water for over 
one million people.

The groundwater was contaminated by more 
than 60 companies that used volatile organic 
compounds for degreasing, metal cleaning and 
other purposes. The EPA listed several sections 
of the San Gabriel Valley as Superfund sites in 
1984, including multiple areas of groundwater 
contaminated by volatile organic compounds. 

For more information on the EPA’s Superfund 
program, visit: http://www.epa.gov/region09/
waste/sfund/ 

Carl Struycken has long been interested in the 
principles in Permaculture not only as it relates 
to growing fruits and vegetables but also in the 
perspective he takes on most human activities.

Struycken, who lived in Pasadena for 25 years, 
is an actor who played Lurch in the Addam’s 
Family, as well as roles in Star Trek, Men in 
Black, Witches of Eastwick, and others. He was 
born in Holland, and grew up in Curaçao in the 
Caribbean, and moved back to Holland at age 15. 
We met at his home to discuss his efforts at home 
food production and permaculture.

He shows me the Bible of Permaculture, Bill 
Mollison’s “Permaculture: A Designers Manual” 
which details a way in which we can grow food 
and live with the land in accord with nature’s 
principles. (“Permaculture” is a coined term 
meaning “permanent agriculture.”) 

 “The whole idea of permaculture is to put in 
as little work as possible, and allow nature to find 
its balance,” says Strucken, who produced all the 
vegetables for a family of 5 for many years using 
these principles.

 “I’m also a big fan of Fukuoka, author of ‘The 
One Straw Revolution.’ If I had the time, I’d love 
to go to Japan and work on his natural farm, and 
work there and learn about his methods,” says 
Struycken.

Both Mollison and Fukuoka are advocates of 
natural farming, which means planting what 
is appropriate for the area, tilling as little as 
possible, letting all the leaves and old plants 
serve as fertilizer for the new plants, and using 
natural methods for bug control. 

Using permaculture methods, Struycken grew 
lots of Asian greens, mostly those members of the 
mustard family that had the highest nutritional 
value. He grew herbs, tomatoes, yard-long beans, 
and 14 fruit trees.

His yard is terraced with cement rubble, pieces 
of old cement walkways that have been neatly 
stacked to form impressive and long-lasting 
walls using a material that is normally discarded. 
He also experimented with raised beds because 
the soil in his garden area was so bad. 

 The smaller the plot, the harder it is to 
practice permaculture methods. Still, Struycken 
never raked up and discarded leaves. Under his 
avocado tree, he allowed the leaves to accumulate 
into a thick layer of mulch. “The layer of avocado 
leaves is well over a foot thick, and when you 
look into the bottom of the pile, it is all naturally 
producing rich soil,” he explains. 

All the kitchen scraps are recycled in many 
compost heaps, and he worked at cultivating the 
earthworms that naturally occurred in his yard 
so that they would do the tilling that farmers 
ordinarily do.

He purchased ladybugs years ago since they 
eat the “bad” insects, and he found that the 
ladybugs like the fennel plants. So the secret 
to keeping ladybugs around is to grow fennel, 
explained Struycken.

Permaculture does not involve raking away 
leaves or garden scraps, but using them for the 
next generation of fertilizer. Although Struycken 
has tried to produce all of his needed fertilizer 
from his own back yard, he has found the need to 
occasionally bring in chicken and horse manure 
for his crops. “I stopped using the horse manure, 
though,” he says, “since I found that it produced 
too many weeds.”

“I was always amazed that I never had to do 
anything to my lettuce, and it was always perfect. 
The ecosystem took care of itself,” explained 
Struycken. He said that though there were many 
spiders and bugs in the garden, whatever bugs 
that ate his lettuce got eaten by some other bug. 
This is one of the basic principles of permaculture 
– that nature, largely left alone, will find its own 
balance. 

Struycken, who has been in the movie 
business for about 30 years, wants to do a series 
of documentaries where he shows sustainable 
communities throughout the world so that the 
principles can be preserved for others to learn 
from.

“The Amish are the most successful 
sustainable farmers and they are using early 18th 
Century technologies,” he says with a smile.

Struycken pauses to explain the difference 
between paleolithic and neolithic in order to 
make a point. 

“Humanoids have been around for at least 
a million years,” he explains, “and modern 
humans have been here maybe 500,000 years. 
The paleolithics were the hunter/gatherers, 
and the neolithics were those who were settled 
in one place and who began agriculture,” says 
Struycken. 

“When we settled, we had to make the effort 
to force ourselves into the new mindset, but our 
true nature is paleolithic,” Struycken explains. 
He then shares a few comparisons to make his 
point.

The paleolithics lived in the here and now, they 
were more primitive by our standards, but they 
controlled their populations, had fewer taboos 
and laws, had less possessions, and managed to 
live on what the forest provided. He cites the 
Bushmen of the Kalahari as an example. 

“Now, when you had agricultural and cow-
raising people who lived adjacent to the primitive 
people, the Bushmen would rarely die of hunger, 
though the agricultural people would die of 
hunger. This is because the agricultural people 
learned to rely on, and expect, much more. 
When cattle died, due to drought, for example, 
the agricultural people suffered far more than 
the Bushmen. The farmers also had to work a lot 
harder, usually 7 days a week, whereas hunter/ 
gatherers worked maybe 3 days a week.”

Struycken cites the Bushmen and many others 
to illustrate that one of our “problems” is that 
we are so advanced that we have lost our primal 
paleolithic nature. Today, systems for gardening, 
farming, commerce, building, etc., are all 
essentially neolithic and therefore unsustainable 
into the future, according to Struycken.

 In this sense, Struycken believes that the 
details of our very survival can be gleaned by 
looking to the past at the details of sustainable 
societies. Struycken is optimistic, idealistic, and 
believes that the solution to our problems is to 
properly understand the living principles of (so-
called) primitive peoples.


Carl Struycken

TIPS FOR GET YOUR MOTOR RUNNING 
If your car has been feeling 
a little sluggish lately, there 
are some things you can do to 
get your motor running right 
again.

First change your oil and filter. 
Make sure to use the grade of 
oil that is recommended by the 
car. Using the wrong grade of 
oil can reduce the performance 
of your car and its gas mileage. 

And, do not rely on the oil light 
in your car. By the time that 
light goes on, some damage 
to your engine may already 
have been done. So, check 
your oil often. When you do, 
also check the brake fluid and 
transmission fluid levels. You 
should flush the brake fluid, 
transmission fluid and coolant 
system every 2 years or 30,000 
miles. Keeping fresh, clean 
fluids in your car will keep your 
motor running smoothly.

Two other things that will are 
replacing your air filter and 
fuel filter frequently. Clean 
filters will help keep dirt out of 
your fuel injectors, fuel pump 
and engine. If too much dirt 
accumulates, it will lead to 
expensive repairs.You should 
also change your spark plugs 
every other year. Worn plugs 
will cause your engine to 
misfire and waste a lot of gas. 
Also, check all the belts and 
hoses in your car for signs of 
wear, especially the timing belt 
or timing chain. If that breaks, 
it can destroy your engine. 
When you do replace it, replace 
the water pump too since the 
procedure for each is the same.

You can do many of these 
things yourself. You do not have 
to be an ace mechanic or have a 
lot of experience. You just need 
the desire, a how to manual and 
a few tools. Then, when you get 
your motor running right, you 
can head on down the highway 
looking for adventure and be 
able to handle whatever comes 
your way.

If your car will no longer run 
on down the highway, please 
consider donating your car 
to charity. If you do, it will be 
picked up fast and free and 
you will get a tax deduction of 
at least $500 if you itemize on 
your federal tax return. The 
process is easy and there are 
many charities that can benefit 
from your car donation. For 
complete details on how to 
donate car, just go to http://
www.cars4charities.org/ or call 
866.448.3487.


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