Apparently, much of the contanimation is due to the federal government’s omnipresent wisdom.  Medical facilities, doctors offices, labs, nursing homes, drug clinics, etc apparently make a widespread policy out of using drains as drug disposal units.  It’s not just unmetabolized drugs and doses from feedlot cattle that’s causing the problem, but huge amounts of concentrated substances poured out on a daily basis by a huge number of businesses that handle drugs.

Those businesses would be disposing of the drugs through the normal biomedical waste procedures - except that the Drug Enforcement Agency has some fairly hare-brained ideas about how contanimated drinking water is better than proper disposal procedures.

There’s some high security surrounding the procedure of dumping pain medicine down a drain:

At Abbott Northwestern Hospital here, nurse Keri Osborne recently was opening a locked room at a spine surgery unit, where a machine must check her fingerprints before she pours unused controlled drugs into the sink.

It’s a good thing that the Feds are on top of meddling in how businesses are able to safely dispose of highly potent chemicals:

In nearby Robbinsdale, North Memorial Medical Center pours 50 gallons of controlled substances into its drains annually rather than pay $25,000 to handle and haul it away for safer disposal, says regulated waste coordinator Jerry Fink.

Part of the cost is due to federal rules that state anyone who handles controlled substances, other than a user, must be certified as a police officer or registered with the DEA. That goes for pharmacists, distributors, even waste handlers.

The DEA says this is changing - but they would do well to put in place an emergency stopgap measure while they twiddle their thumbs for a few years coming up with a booklet of regulations.  Even in that short period of time, what’s worse - everyone having our water tainted with weird drugs, or the rare case of an addict managing to get hold of some Valium because it’s being shipped off to be destroyed?

Glass breaks, paper flies — the loot’s gone hours before the waste company even arrives.

“They’re like an army out there,” said Johnson. “They’re in trucks. They’re on cell phones. It’s a business.”

With prices for aluminum, cardboard and newsprint going up and an economic slowdown putting added pressure on people’s pocketbooks, curbside refuse has become a hot commodity.

A truck piled high with mixed recyclables can fetch upward of $1,000; newspapers alone can grab about $600.

“These guys are becoming much more organized and much more prevalent,” said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Norcal Waste Systems Inc., a garbage and recycling company in San Francisco and other cities throughout Northern California. “This has nothing to do with the lone homeless man picking up cans. We’re seeing organized fleets of professional poachers with trucks.”

A Silicon Valley lawmaker is gaining momentum with a bill that would require “climate change” to be among the science topics that all California public school students are taught.

The measure, by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would mandate that future science textbooks approved for California public schools include climate change.

“You can’t have a science curriculum that is relevant and current if it doesn’t deal with the science behind climate change,” Simitian said. “This is a phenomenon of global importance and our kids ought to understand the science behind that phenomenon.”

The state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, Jan. 30 by a 26-13 vote. It heads now to the state Assembly. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken numerous actions to reduce global warming, but he has yet to weigh in on Simitian’s bill. Other Republicans in the Capitol, however, are not happy about the proposal.

Some say the science on global warming isn’t clear, while others worry the bill would inject environmental propaganda into classrooms.

“I find it disturbing that this mandate to teach this theory is not accompanied by a requirement that the discussion be science-based and include a critical analysis of all sides of the subject,” said Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, during the Senate debate.

This seems like an intrusion from a bunch of people who don’t know for sure what they’re talking about, but want to feel like they’re doing something. But if the legislature wants to encourage science education, let them send some more money to school districts to hire new science teachers. Or fund the creation of a new state university that focuses on scientific research.

State legislators have no business writing science curriculum, that’s for certain.