Georgetown dedicates photovoltaic roof
With a dedication at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., last week, a solar roof has joined several other projects at the school designed to demonstrate new technologies for cutting energy costs. The Photovoltaic National Education Exemplar, as the roof is called, is a 300-kW system employing 4464 photovoltaic modules covering more than 36,000 sq ft on the roof of the university's Intercultural Center (above). Electricity produced is added directly to the building's electric system; excess power is shared by other campus buildings during low-demand periods such as weekends and holidays. Of the facility's $24 million total cost, $10 million came from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Animal cruelty charged in growth gene work The Foundation on Economic Trends, a self-styled "clearinghouse for public information" headed by social critic and activist Jeremy Rifkin, and the Humane Society of the United States have sued the Department of Agriculture to halt experiments involving the transfer of human growth genes into pigs and sheep.
The suit, filed Oct. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charges that animal experiments in which USDA is participating are not being conducted according to required federal procedures, including compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and are cruel to animals. Last May, this same court issued an injunction sought by Rifkin to halt certain experiments approved by the National Institutes of Health's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) because of RAC's failure to comply with NEPA (C&EN, Aug. 13, page 10).
The experiments now under challenge are being conducted jointly by researchers at the University of Washington, the University of Pennsylvania, and USDA's Agricultural Research Service. They expand on earlier work in mice by Pennsylvania's Ralph L. Brinster and colleagues. In these experiments, the gene that codes for human growth hormone was injected into the fertilized eggs of mice. It was sometimes incorporated and expressed in the mouse that developed from the egg and in some of the mouse's offspring. The present work attempts to repeat the work in pigs and sheep. USDA's role is to provide the pig and sheep embryos and to perform the transfers.
The experiments are designed to help understand how growth is regulated in domesticated animals, explains Dan B. Laster, associate deputy administrator for animal research at the Agricultural Research Service. Like the earlier experiments in mice, a chemical replica, and not human DNA itself, is what is being injected, he points out. The project has been approved by the appropriate recombinant DNA committees. •
EPA adds more sites to The Environmental Protection Agency last week announced that 244 hazardous waste sites have been proposed for addition to the national priorities list (NPL), which will make most of them eligible for cleanup under Superfund. For the first time, federally owned sites and areas whose groundwater has been contaminated by pesticides are included on the list.
Lee M. Thomas, assistant EPA administrator for solid waste and emergency response, admits the proposal process has taken longer than anticipated. He attributes the delay to the greater number of sites the agency had to deal with—from an estimated 150 to an actual 244—and to policy decisions to include federal and pesticide-contaminated sites. 'The process [of proposing sites] has moved along as expeditiously as it could and still produce a good quality product," he insists. And he bris-
hazardous waste list ties at what he considers an unfair charge of political manipulation of the timing of the list's announcement leveled at the agency by Rep. James J. Florio (D.-N.J.) (see page 16).
He did acknowledge that the process of placing sites on the NPL, which has taken a year or more, is too long and can be streamlined. To that end, he says, those proposed sites that offer few problems for resolution can be added to the NPL sequentially. "I expect that in six months the agency will finalize a good proportion of the ones it is proposing today." If all of last week's sites are added, the NPL will include 786 sites, nearly 45% greater than the current list of 538.
Of the 36 federally owned facilities proposed, one is a Department of Interior site, three are Department of Energy sites, and the rest are Department of Defense sites. Unlike private sites, federal facilities are not
October 8, 1984 C&EN 5