SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 13 September 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, announced today that it has entered into a marketing partnership with STP Specialty Technical Publishers. The two companies will develop application software focusing on compliance, auditing, and data and information gathering and management for the environmental, waste management, and due diligence industries.

Locus initially intends to add checklists, guidelines, and other content developed by STP Specialty Technical Publishers to eSurvey, Locus’s integrated environmental health and safety (EH&S) auditing software tool used by auditors in the field to record deficiencies as they are noted, either directly into a Palm OS™- or Pocket PC™-based personal digital assistant (PDA) or a Symbol Technologies™ unit equipped with a bar code reader. eSurvey
is a module of LocusFocusSM, Locus Technologies’ award-winning, comprehensive environmental web portal.

The functionality of eSurvey is provided through three separate interfaces: the PDA interface, a web-based user interface, and a web-based management interface. After an audit or inspection is completed, results are uploaded into a holding table on a networked database. Through the user interface, auditors can review and, as necessary, modify their findings before final logging into the system. Managers can track deficiencies in their various areas and monitor progress in resolving issues, as well as comment and schedule re-audits through the web-based management interface. eSurvey also includes e-mailing and customized reporting capabilities. Through the web-based user interface, EH&S staff can also print customized reports and presentations.

“We are very pleased that, through this partnership, STP Specialty Technical Publishers content will be made available to our customers via eSurvey. Auditors will be able to access familiar STP Specialty Technical Publishers auditing checklists and guidance in the field, directly through eSurvey, thus significantly reducing the time to perform the audits, reducing errors, and eliminating double-input of audit information,” said Mr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus. “STP Specialty Technical Publishers content on eSurvey will be of particular interest to large industrial companies with numerous, complex industrial sites and those performing due diligence audits for Merger and Acquisition (M&A) industries,” added Duplancic.

“We are delighted to be able to offer our tried-and-tested compliance and auditing content in such an exciting new medium, and we look forward to working in partnership with Locus Technologies. While still producing our guides in the more traditional mediums we need to be at the cutting edge of technology in order to meet the needs of the entire compliance community,” says Chris Heming, president of STP Specialty Technical Publishers.

 

ABOUT STP SPECIALTY TECHNICAL PUBLISHERS
STP Specialty Technical Publishers, one of North America’s leading publishers of reference and interpretive materials, publishes environmental, health & safety, transportation, business management, and accounting guides, including International Standard Organization (ISO) guides. STP Specialty Technical Publishers publications are authored by experts in their respective fields who monitor changing laws and regulations to provide meaningful and practical updates. More information about the company can be obtained at www.stpub.com or by telephone at (604) 983-3434 or (800) 251-0381.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 20 February 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, announced today that the company has entered into a joint application development and marketing partnership with Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Symbol). Locus and Symbol plan to develop and provide application software and business solutions focusing on data and information gathering and management in the environmental and waste management industries.

Data acquisition, storage, and management have been the Achilles Heel of the environmental industry for years. The investigations and cleanups of contaminated waste sites produce enormous amounts of data on the nature and extent of contamination at a site. At larger, more complex sites, it is not uncommon to drill several thousand boreholes and wells, collect tens of thousands of samples, and then analyze each of these for several hundred contaminants. Long-term monitoring of conditions at such sites, even after the initial cleanup is complete, can last for decades and cost thousands to several million dollars per year per site. Given that there are an estimated 300,000-400,000 contaminated sites in the United States alone, it is clear that both industry and government face significant “stewardship” costs for decades to come, and that much of these costs will be charges related to data collection and information management.

The data overload is not just limited to contaminated waste sites. The operation of water/wastewater treatment plants and various emission and process monitoring systems at industrial plants also generate enormous quantities of data.

The Locus and Symbol partnership will enable the collection of environmental data which can be facilitated using Symbol Technologies hand-held devices equipped with bar code readers feeding information directly into LocusFocus (SM), Locus’s award winning environmental web-portal and environmental information management (EIM) system. Locus’s existing Palm Pilot and PocketPC applications for Environmental, Health and Safety audits (eSurvey) and water level readings (eWell) will be ported to Symbol devices. Possibilities for expansion of these applications into other areas are limitless.

“A substantial reward awaits those companies with the vision and the will to take advantage of new technologies. Those companies that adopt hand-held wireless applications and web-based systems for data acquisition and storage, that bring greater automation to their environmental information management processes, and that otherwise eliminate inefficiencies stand to gain a substantial return on their investment, “ said Mr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

“We are very pleased to join forces with Locus to bring the next generation of wireless and mobile computing products and solutions from Symbol to the growing environmental market.

Locus is in a leading role to improve field data collection. By automating field data acquisition, companies dealing with environmental problems stand to lower their operating cost, while helping to improve the environment at the same time,” said Mr. Stanley P. Jaworski, Vice President of Worldwide Channels and Alliances.

 

ABOUT SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES
Symbol Technologies, Inc., winner of the National Medal of Technology, is a global leader in mobile data transaction systems, providing innovative customer solutions based on wireless local area networking for data and voice, application-specific mobile computing and bar code data capture. Symbol’s wireless information appliances connect the physical world of people on the move, packages, paper and shipping pallets, to information systems and the Internet. Today, some 10 million Symbol bar code scanners, mobile computers and wireless LANs are utilized worldwide in markets ranging from retailing to transportation and distribution logistics, manufacturing, parcel and postal delivery, government, healthcare and education. Symbol’s systems and products are used to increase productivity from the factory floor to the retail store, to the enterprise and out to the home. Information about
Symbol is available at www.symbol.com, or by telephone at (631) 738-2400 or (800) 722-6234.

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Ted Cuzzillo — Contributing Writer
Contaminated land is a scourge in many urban areas, but in the booming South Bay it’s often more than worth the trouble of cleaning it up.

“Demand is so huge,” said real estate broker John Troughten of Cushman Wakefield, “the contamination doesn’t even matter.”

These aren’t the highly contaminated Superfund sites but rather their less dangerous and more easily reused relatives called brownfields. While there are certain technical standards for a city or other government entity to declare a site a brownfield, the term also has wide informal use for any land with contamination that temporarily limits its usability.

Because they can more easily be put back into productive use, brownfields have prompted several state and federal programs to subsidize remediation and help define liability.

But in the booming Silicon Valley, simple economics usually obviate slow-moving government programs.

 

Changing Economics
The rule-of-thumb discount on land with a contamination stigma–whether formally designated or not–is 30 percent. That’s generally plenty to pay for remediation.

Perhaps more important, said Mr. Troughton, are rapidly appreciating values on land and the value of any development on it. While the cost of remediation and building remains almost the same, values are soaring. “The monstrous amount of profit that’s happening is because of super demand,” he said.

The growing scarcity of commercial land has forced sites that were once not even considered for development out onto the market, said Mr. Troughton. “It used to be that you could pick between two or three pieces of property, but now you’re lucky if you get one.”

Preparing a site for reuse is called remediation, not cleanup, since few sites are ever cleaned to their original states. Factors determining how clean “clean” is include pressure on site owners from their attorneys, technical consultants, regulatory agencies, the general public and their representatives, according to Michael Lane, a principal at Greenbrae Environmental in Marin County.

 

How it got that way
Brownfield remediation in the South Bay is generally easier than in San Francisco,
Emeryville or other areas around the bay with more varied industrial histories.

The bulk of Silicon Valley contamination can be traced to the 1950s and ’60s manufacture of semiconductors by such companies as Raytheon, Fairchild Semiconductor and GTE. They used a solvent known as trichloroethylene, commonly known as TCE and at the time believed to be nontoxic.

Toxic or not, it wasn’t supposed to escape the underground fiberglass vaults used to store it. Fortunately, TCE readily dissipates when exposed to air. Also, land can be used even as remediation continues — usually with the lowest possible profile.

“Brownfield in Silicon Valley is probably the best kept secret,” said Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus Technologies.

And while they may not be as bad as Superfund sites, brownfields aren’t innocuous. Mr. Duplancic cites an article published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine (www.nejm.org) that says 80 to 90 percent of cancers are due to environmental exposure, not genetics (Unfortunately, this article has been removed).

“Yet in the past 15 years, the explosion of molecular genetics has overshadowed environmental explanations by revealing genetic mechanisms underlying cancer,” the article says. Mr. Duplancic called the research “a significant boost for environmental industry.”

 

Pump, scrub, or let it be
The Netscape Communications campus in Mountain View, cited by many as an example of successful reuse, employs ongoing remediation.

Machines continuously pump groundwater up and over activated charcoal within structures resembling 1950s-style science-fiction rockets. These “air scrubbers” reduce what are already unmeasurable levels of concentration with no evidence of risk to health, Mr. Duplancic said.

The process is analogous to rinsing detergent from a sponge. After many rinses, it still seems to have more in it.

Old gas stations were another source of contamination in the form of petroleum distillates. Like TCE, gasoline dissipates easily in the air. Another, newer technique is to use petroleum-eating microbes.

Builders can also help avoid the effects of remaining underground contamination. For example, instead of disturbing contaminants by hammering piles, some builders use a “spread” foundation — a concrete pad underneath the entire building — and vapor barriers to stop gases from leaking upward into the building, perhaps concentrating in a closet that’s opened only once or twice a year.

The new Microsoft campus on Torre Avenue in Cupertino used both techniques to remediate dangers from effects of leaks from an old paving company’s 20,000-gallon underground diesel tank.

A controversial new trend is “monitored natural attenuation,” said Mr. Lane. Contaminants are left in place and monitored at regular intervals.

The legal environment has evolved over the last few years. Historically, prospective land buyers feared being held liable even if they had no involvement in polluting.

“The liability hasn’t changed,” said Jim Hanson, the Region 9 brownfields coordinator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco. “but now there’s a lot of new policy and enforcement discretion.”

A new lender liability policy clarifies that unless a lender had some involvement in management of site, the EPA won’t consider it potentially liable. Also, when property sits above a contaminated aquifer but was not the source of pollution, the land owner will not be held responsible.

Other new tools include insurance that kicks in if property is remediated and then more contamination is found.

Are there more brownfields in the making? It’s a lot less likely today. In Mountain View, for example, pharmaceuticals is the only manufacturing industry now, said Michael Percy, principal planner for the city. And the controls are “a thousand times more strict” than in the past.

Ted Cuzzillo is a freelance writer based in Point Richmond. Contact him at
theodore@cannolo.com.

Copyright 2000 American City Business Journals Inc.
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