Soil

On a summer's day in 1943, a young scientist at Rutgers discovered an antibiotic that would change millions of lives. But Albert Schatz, who died in West Mount Airy in 2005, was denied credit. His name never appeared on the Nobel Prize given for that work.   That's the little-known story told in Peter Pringle's new book, Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug (Walker & Company, 269 pp., $26). And there's a widow who remembers, and a grandson conquering cerebral palsy to create a documentary film honoring his wronged grandfather's work.

Six months after a truck spilled 4,000 gallons of kerosene along Route 70 in Medford, the cleanup is finally complete. Trucks arrived at the site between Chairville and Eayrestown Roads early Thursday morning to begin moving more than 300 tons of kerosene-soaked soil. The soil had been excavated from the south side of Route 70 in February to prevent groundwater contamination, but the contaminated soil was deposited on the north side of the road about 100 feet from the home of Walter and Bettie Cliver.

The dirt that's too dirty for your backyard may be just fine for the top of a landfill, the base of a highway, or the shoulder of a road. Just mix it in the right proportion, and the contaminated soil found in Burlington Township can be rendered relatively harmless and put to use elsewhere in Burlington County. The state Department of Environmental Protection revealed two weeks ago that contaminated soil had been found in two housing developments built on a former apple orchard that used arsenic, lead, DDT and other dangerous chemicals.

What do you do when someone dumps 300 tons of kerosene-soaked soil about 100 feet from your home? If you are Walter and Bettie Cliver of Medford Township, you wait a few weeks to see if the people who dumped it there intend to remove it. Then you start calling the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). In February, 300 tons of kerosene-soaked soil were excavated from the south side of a 300-yard stretch of Route 70 between Chairville and Eayrestown Roads after a truck spilled more than 4,000 gallons of kerosene onto the highway.

A crowd of about 75 residents urged the Winslow Township Committee last night to deny a soil-extraction application that would expand a mining operation in the township. The application, filed by George F. Pettinos Inc., requested approval to mine an additional 60 acres. The company filed for the expansion, to be made in three phases, to remove sand used to produce concrete and asphalt, said Curt Mitchell, the vice president of production for Pettinos. The proposal requests approval so the company can dig 65 feet below the natural surface at a plot near the corner of Williamstown-New Freedom Road and Williamstown-New Brooklyn Road.

Two different companies applying for the right to mine soil from sites in Winslow Township are scheduled to present their controversial cases in front of the Township Committee at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. The public hearing, which will be conducted at the Winslow Township Municipal Building, also will be attended by a strong township environmental group and angry residents who don't want to see any more soil-mining holes in the township. Both applications were referred back to the Township Committee by a Camden County Superior Court judge.

A $225,000 contract dispute may delay soil and groundwater testing of the Ellis toxic-waste site on Sharp Road in Evesham, a state official said last night. Frank Richardson, a site manager with the state Department of Environmental Protection, said testing at the defunct drum-recycling operation, which was scheduled to begin in late January or early February, could be pushed back to the late spring. Roy F. Weston Inc. of West Chester, Pa., conducted the first phase of tests for the DEP in 1987.

It is the first day of March, and reluctant gardeners can already be overheard muttering that they only have a couple of months of grace before they have to start mowing the lawn. On the other hand, eager gardeners, who have been longing to be out with the spade and the hoe since they put the tools away last fall, face the month when spring arrives with boundless enthusiasm; the challenge is to keep them from pushing ahead too quickly. The gardening partner, for example, is wont to dash out as soon as the soil thaws and start digging over the vegetable garden.

New Jersey environmental officials said yesterday that they would send 100 drums of radon-contaminated soil to Tennessee in a pilot project that might lead to the disposal of 15,000 drums of the soil now being stored in North Jersey. The plan calls for sending the drums to Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the soil will be mixed with radioactive dirt at a facility licensed to handle radioactive waste. From there, the tainted soil will be sent to one of three federally licensed radioactive-waste disposal sites in the country.

State environmental officials, facing a court order to remove drums of radon-tainted soil from Essex County, said yesterday that they would temporarily store the 15,000 drums from Essex and Hudson Counties at a state- owned site near Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Ocean County. The decision by Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Richard Dewling was attacked almost immediately by legislators from the Ocean County area. Several called on Dewling to resign. The announcement was the latest development in the two-year search by the DEP to find a final disposal site for the radon-contaminated soil, which was excavated from homes in Montclair, Glen Ridge and West Orange and is now stored in Montclair and Kearny.

On a summer's day in 1943, a young scientist at Rutgers discovered an antibiotic that would change millions of lives. But Albert Schatz, who died in West Mount Airy in 2005, was denied credit. His name never appeared on the Nobel Prize given for that work.   That's the little-known story told in Peter Pringle's new book, Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug (Walker & Company, 269 pp., $26). And there's a widow who remembers, and a grandson conquering cerebral palsy to create a documentary film honoring his wronged grandfather's work.

In the early 1980s, when John "Whitey" Sullivan was in charge, Father Judge kicked off its football season with a two-hour drive to Wildwood, N.J., and a clash at Maxwell Field, just blocks from the beach, against St. John Neumann. Since the Beach Bowl days, the Crusaders mostly have stayed close to home in Week 1, usually playing a suburban foe such as Neshaminy or Council Rock North. Now, Judge, setting the season-opening bar for future years at an incredibly high level, will take a 7 1/2-hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean and play in Ireland.

Since mid-September, the students in Larry Hepner's soil-morphology field course at Delaware Valley College have left their classrooms behind at the campus near Doylestown for the gently rolling fields about 10 miles away. There, they hiked through pastures and woods, sifted through soil, and talked about crops. "Being out here, everything was new to me," said Mykola Kosyk, 21, an environmental-science major from Northeast Philadelphia. "It was very awesome. " Kosyk and his classmates can thank, in part, the man who wrote the nation's tax code in 1954.

The men's U.S. national soccer team only had two practices under new coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who vows to have his team play an attacking style that mirrored his play as a striker for the German national team. After a sluggish first half, the United States got in attack mode during Wednesday's 1-1 tie with Mexico in an international friendly at Lincoln Financial Field. The United States tied the score when Robbie Rogers tapped in a cross from Brek Shea in the 73d minute. "We saw, especially in the second half, a very exciting game, and it was an amazing learning process the players went through in just 90 minutes," Klinsmann said.

Get the last of the nursery stock acquired in April and May into the ground - now. Wait until direct sun has left the site and be generous with water for the rest of summer. Stake lilies . The stake should be as tall as the lily stalk will eventually become; tie stem loosely to stake as close to the top as possible. Staking a lily only to the midpoint is an invitation to a broken stalk. One-inch-wide strips of cloth are the gentlest ties. Plant tender summer bulbs (caladiums, dahlias, etc.)

A crowd huddled around artist-engineer Sam Newman as he fastened sheet-metal blades into nine-spoke bicycle wheels, explaining the steps as he went along so that by the end of the workshop, observers would know how to make their own wind turbines. Another group was clustered around the counter with free Mediterranean vegetable and cream of broccoli soups. And then there were the people who had come in to drop off dirt. "The exciting thing about this is that you don't know what will become of it and you don't know who's going to walk in the door," said Amy Franceschini, founder of Futurefarmers, an organizer of the event at Second Street and Girard Avenue in Northern Liberties.

TOKYO - Workers have discovered new pools of radioactive water leaking from Japan's crippled nuclear complex that officials believe are behind soaring levels of radiation spreading to soil and seawater. Crews also detected plutonium - a key ingredient in nuclear weapons - in the soil outside the complex, though officials insisted yesterday the finding posed no threat to public health. Plutonium is present in the fuel at the complex, which has been leaking radiation for more than two weeks, so experts had expected to find traces once crews began searching for evidence of it this week.

ON AUG. 31 in this space, I revealed my intention to "boycott" the Nov. 13 Manny Pacquiao - Antonio Margarito bout in Cowboys Stadium so that I might devote my full attention to the Penn State at Ohio State game on the same date. With the Nittany Lions having won three straight and this past weekend presenting coach Joe Paterno with his 400th career victory, that decision remains firm, despite the fact that North Philadelphia welterweight Mike Jones , in the most important fight of his career to date, has been added to the pay-per-view portion of Pacquiao-Margarito.

The New and Improved Stages of Grief. Mary Carpenter's solo performance is, as she explains, her own work, that of "a non-doctor, but practitioner. " The show, though based on her experience navigating the minefield of modern mourning rituals - after losing her high school boyfriend, her brother, and finally, close friend and Philly Comedy?Sportz icon Mike Young - is, at its core, a comic piece. After all, Carpenter has been a ComedySportz improv performer for nearly 20 years. A wry update of the five stages of grief as outlined in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' 1969 book On Death and Dying , Carpenter hosts a slide show for each stage, and suggests its replacement.