Rail board issues emergency order Responding to pleas from chemical pro­ducers and other industries, the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) has issued an emergency service order to try to resolve the crisis in rail transportation that is affecting the southern and west­ern regions of the U.S. (C&EN, Nov. 3, page 7).

The emergency order is designed to improve conditions in the short term for shippers who rely on Union Pacific (UP) Railroad for moving products and feed­stocks. STB's order tries to walk a line between providing relief to anguished shippers who say they are losing tens of millions of dollars per month because of UP's service problems and impeding UP's own remedy plans. The STB order took effect Nov. 5, following hard on the heels of an Oct. 27 STB hearing that examined the service and safety prob­lems that have plagued UP since its merg­er with Southern Pacific Railroad last year.

Under the emergency service order, STB is allowing shippers with UP con­tracts in the Houston area to use the Texas Mexican Railway instead of UP to relieve some of the rail congestion in the area. And in a direct response to the specific concerns of the more than 60 shippers who testified at the STB hear­ing, the board is authorizing other rail­roads, namely the Texas Mexican and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, to run their rolling stock on certain UP tracks in the Houston area to facilitate railcar movement.

Other provisions of the order deal with handling anticipated traffic increas­es associated with current grain harvests, problems occurring on passenger trains operating over UP track, and augmented reporting on rail movements of grain and coal. STB has scheduled a Dec. 3 hearing to evaluate how well the emergency or­der is working.

UP says it intends to comply fully with the provisions of the service order and maintains that all of its service prob­lems will be resolved before the end of December. UP spokesman John Brom­ley says the railroad is still not convinced that some of the suggestions put forth by shippers for resolving problems and contained in the STB order won't im­pede UP's own plans for restoring nor­mal service.

But the impacted industries are not

sure that STB went far enough. The Soci­ety of the Plastics Industry (SPI), which along with the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the National Industrial Transportation League petitioned STB for the emergency order, is encouraged but wary. "SPI is concerned that the action taken by the board will not relieve the serious negative economic impact rail service problems are having on suppliers of plastics raw materials," SPI states. Overall, it doubts the response is aggres­sive enough.

More than just service problems and STB orders face the railroad's manage­ment. For the second time this year, the Federal Railroad Administration is initi­ating an investigation of safety prob­lems at the railroad. Several crashes and at least three fatal accidents have regu­lators concerned that UP is pushing its employees so hard to clear up the grid­lock that safety hazards are resulting. Having safety investigators looking over its shoulder will not make UP's job any easier.

David Hanson

Supreme Court declines academy's plea; Congress responds

Congress was working feverishly last week on legislation to exempt the Na­tional Academy of Sciences from having to comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The move to amend the act began virtually minutes af-

Alberts: academy won't change

ter the U.S. Supreme Court refused last Monday to hear the academy's petition for review of a lower court decision that held that the academy must abide by FACA's provisions.

The case, which began last year, threw the academy and its operating arm, the National Research Council, into crisis by questioning the proce­dures under which NRC does advisory work for the government (C&EN, April 21, page 29). FACA, enacted in 1972, is designed to ensure that the views of public stakeholders and other interested parties are represented on federal adviso­ry committees and requires that agency officials chair committees and choose members.

For years, NAS operated under the as­sumption that the act did not apply to its committees. But then the Animal Legal Defense Fund and two other animal rights groups sued the government over an animal care manual prepared by an NRC panel for the Department of Health & Human Services. They claimed their side was not adequately represented on the panel and sought access to data and transcripts of the panel's meetings. A fed­eral district court upheld the academy procedures, but an appeals court re­versed that decision, forcing the acade­my to ask the Supreme Court to reverse the latter decision.

The academy's request was supported by a group of 84 Nobel Prize winners and other distinguished scientists, who told the Court that an important, inde­pendent national resource would be lost if NRC were to be bound by FACA. What didn't help NAS, however, was a brief filed by the U.S. Attorney General's Of­fice that recommended the high court not review the case.

In a statement following the decision, NAS President Bruce M. Alberts said that under no circumstances would NAS comply with FACA. NAS, he said, would continue to appoint, manage, and con­trol its committees, and keep closed all deliberations leading to their recommen­dations. "If FACA is applied to academy studies, the likely outcome is that the academy will be conducting far fewer studies, because the academy will not create FACA-regulated committees," Al­berts stated. About 65% of NRC's work is done for the federal government.

NAS will apparently prevail in the end. At C&EN press time on Nov. 5, a House subcommittee was holding a hear­ing to get the facts of the case on the record. According to sources in both the

NOVEMBER 10, 1997 C&EN 5

n e w s of t h e w e e k

House and Senate committees that have jurisdiction over FACA, no members be­lieve NAS was ever meant to fall under the act's provisions. So committee mem­bers are eager to arrange the proper re­pairs to the law. The House may have a chance to vote on those repairs this week.

Wil Lepkowski

DeKalb, Monsanto sued over corn seed Rhone-Poulenc Agro (RPA) has sued Monsanto and Illinois-based seed produc­er DeKalb Genetics over rights to tech­nology for producing herbicide-resistant corn. RPA is the agricultural products subsidiary of the French life sciences firm Rhone-Poulenc.

RPA says that patented technology it licensed to DeKalb has been used inap­propriately to produce "Roundup Ready corn" that is genetically engineered to tolerate Monsanto's flagship glyphosate herbicide product, Roundup. DeKalb dis­agrees, saying that its 1994 licensing agreement with RPA clearly allows it to commercialize Roundup Ready corn and sublicense the technology.

That 1994 licensing agreement was it­self the end result of a lawsuit—settled out of court—filed by Rhone-Poulenc, DeKalb, and Calgene against Monsanto, explains a Monsanto spokesman. And, he says, DeKalb and Monsanto are "well within their rights" under that settlement agreement. Monsanto has since pur­chased Calgene and holds about a 40% interest in DeKalb.

RPA agrees that royalty-free rights were granted to DeKalb under the settle­ment. It provided DeKalb with glypho-sate-tolerant gene sequences for which it holds a patent. But RPA says those rights were not intended for sale or transfer to a competitor, such as Monsanto. It is seeking to legally establish ownership of the corn seed technology and prohibit Monsanto's use of its biotechnology in­novations without a license.

"Our lawsuit asks for damages, but that is so far an insignificant matter be­cause neither DeKalb nor Monsanto has sold any product," the company says. "We hope to be able to achieve some profit-sharing arrangement with anyone who chooses to utilize our genetic tech­nology." Thus, RPA sued to protect its investment in the technology.

At stake is a share in the $1.9 billion

U.S. market for seed corn. Pending final government approvals, DeKalb antici­pates launching Roundup Ready corn for the 1998 growing season. It is ex­pected to reach annual sales of about $600 million, reports BioScience Securi­ties, Orinda, Calif., by gaining about a 25% share of 80 million acres of corn planted annually in the U.S. Roundup Ready corn will compete with Liberty-Link corn, engineered to be resistant to Liberty herbicide (glufosinate), produced by the Hoechst/Schering joint venture, AgrEvo.

Ann Thayer

National Chemistry Week turns 10 The 10th anniversary7 celebration of Na­tional Chemistry Week (NCW), held Nov. 2-8, was marked by thousands of volunteers from the American Chemical Society's local sections hosting a variety of events that sought to bring the joy and potential of chemistry to the general public.

The centerpiece of this year's activi-

Fourth-grade students from Bunker Hill Elementary School in Washington, D.C., took part in National Chemistry Week activities at ACS headquarters.

ties was a "grand experiment" to map water hardness—a function of the con­centration of calcium and magnesium in water—across the U.S., explains NCW coordinator Michael J. Kenney. Details of the experiment are outlined in the "Planet Chemistry" activity booklet, ap­proximately 650,000 copies of which were mailed to local section NCW coordinators.

NCW is a grassroots ACS program that began a decade ago as National Chemis­

try Day. "It has provided a mechanism by which ACS members celebrate what they do every day," says Kenney. As in years past, all ACS local sections—188 this year—have participated in NCW ac­tivities. It was likewise an activity-filled week for staff at ACS headquarters in Washington, D.C.

This year's event was unique in that it was "the first in which each ACS local section participated in one unified activi­ty," Kenney points out. And "it was the largest ever celebration of National Chem­istry Week, at least in terms of national participation."

That participation began with experi­ment No. 3 in the "Planet Chemistry" booklet, which contains test strips for measuring water hardness.

Participants, mostly schoolchildren, were asked to use the test strips to ana­lyze water from a variety of natural sources—lakes, streams, and so forth. Data gathered by the participants include the source of the water sample and the concentration of hardness ions in the sample.

On Oct. 1, the NCW office began receiv­ing and recording data. Participants either mailed in their results or submitted data

electronically to the NCW web site (http://www.acs. org/ncw). Data col­lection will con­tinue through the end of November. As of Nov. 5, more than 2,125 data points from 400 of the U.S.'s 4,300 zip codes had been received, Kenney says.

A map of wa­ter hardness, by zip code, is being created from the tallied results of the experiment. The map can be

downloaded from the NCW web site. Anyone who sends in a self-addressed stamped envelope with a completed data form will also be sent a copy of the map.

Kenney says he plans to use the results of the experiment in presentations to sci­ence teachers and others interested in in­novative methods to teach chemistry and the methods of science. For now, the ex­periment united ACS for the 10th anniver­sary of its unique celebration of science.

William Schulz

6 NOVEMBER 10, 1997 C&EN