A California environmental oversight board approved a state plan outlining strategies to safely reduce hazardous waste — despite sharp criticism from environmental groups who say several aspects of the plan could invite deregulation.

A 2021 state law directed the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to publish a plan every three years, outlining the state’s approach to minimize the generation, disposal and incineration of hazardous waste. In March, the state agency released a draft of the first-ever hazardous waste management plan, drawing opposition for a controversial recommendation to consider allowing more contaminated soil to be dumped at nonhazardous landfills.

Eight months later, after four public meetings, a revised plan was discussed during a hearing in mid-November at the CalEPA headquarters in Sacramento. Many environmentalists remained wary, noting the plan still recommends reviewing federal exemptions for hazardous materials that can be recycled and a broader reassessment of California’s standards. Their fear is that this could lead the state to roll back its protocols — widely considered among the most strict in the country.

“We find this plan to be extremely deregulatory and paving a path for DTSC to adopt more loopholes for industry,” said Andrea Loera, an attorney with San Francisco-based nonprofit Earthjustice.

“Excluding hazardous waste from the law,” she continued, “does not make hazardous waste dangers magically disappear.”

The Board of Environmental Safety, a five-member committee tasked with supervising DTSC, voted 4-1 to approve the plan. Board members said they recognized the unease around parts of the plan but vowed to closely track these proposals to ensure any changes did not result in harmful deregulation.

“I’ve heard serious concerns that evaluations called for … will necessarily lead to outcomes that are less protective for public heath,” said Andrew Rakestraw, the board’s chair. “And … we, as a board, our mandate is to ensure that does not come to pass.”

Board member Ingrid Brostrom echoed those sentiments, ultimately voting in favor of the plan.

“What I fear is, if we basically allow DTSC to move forward without the plan, we have simply removed our oversight,” said Brostrom. “The question for me is, is having this plan better than having no plan at all? For me, the answer is no.”

The plan suggests the state should evaluate the federal government’s exemptions and exclusions for recyclable streams of hazardous waste.

Because of California’s more stringent hazardous waste regulations, much more potentially dangerous waste needs to go to a specialized landfill or treatment facility than would be required by the federal government’s rules.

However, the state only has two hazardous waste landfills, and disposal there is significantly more expensive.

There is a loophole, which has also caused an uproar among environmental advocates: Oftentimes, industry and government agencies opt to export California hazardous waste waste to municipal landfills in neighboring states that rely on the less-restrictive federal rules.

The federal program also waives fees and requirements for “legitimate” recycling of certain hazardous wastes, such as scrap metal. Environmentalists said they worry this would put more communities at risk, noting the largest environmental cleanup in California’s history are lead-contaminated homes near a former battery recycling plant in Southeast Los Angeles County.

“It is not the time for us to stand on par with the federal government which is trying to dismantle hazardous waste protections,” said Ivana Castellanos, an organizer with Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The state’s new plan set out to address these dilemmas by identifying ways to minimize hazardous waste at the source and explore ways to recycle emerging sources of hazardous waste, such as lithium-ion batteries.

But many environmental organizations say the plan doesn’t provide the state with a proper road map, leaving out specific targets or dates for reducing hazardous waste.

At the Nov. 17 meeting, the board said it would consider requiring DTSC to set hazardous waste reduction and diversion goals for the next iteration of the plan, which is due in 2028.

Environmentalists also say the plan appears to try to reduce hazardous waste by redefining what counts as hazardous.

The plan suggests the state should to review the federal government’s exemptions and exclusions for recyclable streams of hazardous waste, such as reclaimed scrap metal.

A handful of recommendations in the plan call for the evaluation of the effectiveness of a state test that simulates how toxic substances may leak out of contaminated solid waste in landfill conditions; how exposure to certain California-regulated metals corresponds with health effects; and the state’s benchmarks for lead-containing waste.

DTSC officials said these evaluations were required under the 2021 law that established the state hazardous waste management plan. At the hearing, DTSC director Katie Butler pushed back on accusations that the plan was a deregulatory scheme, stressing its overarching goal is to safeguard Californians.

“The intention is to protect health, safety, the environment — and that is the lens in which we look at this entire plan,” Butler said at the meeting.

In addition to approving the state plan, board members voted to discuss ways oversee these “contentious” recommendations in public meetings to be held Jan. 14-15 in Sacramento.

More times than she can remember, Jean Mueller stood on the catwalk of the 200-inch Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory scanning the night sky, trying to time the exact moment to close the dome.

An hour and a half northeast of San Diego, the Palomar Observatory is owned and operated by Caltech, and as telescope operator, Mueller was responsible for protecting its instruments from the weather. Inside the structure, a 200-inch mirror captured light from distant stars in a time window crucial to the observing astronomer’s research. But when a fog bank rolled closer, Mueller had to make the call.

“I would get the dome closed within a minute or two of the fog actually hitting it,” said Mueller. “We are vigilant for anything that might damage the mirror. You don’t want acid rain on the mirror because that’s going to eat the aluminum coating. Ash, combined with humidity, can be caustic.”

Mueller, a telescope operator at Palomar from 1985 to 2014, called her path to astronomy “nonstandard.” She had a graduate degree in library science and had worked as a librarian for USC for 10 years when she learned about a job opening at a different Southern California observatory: Mt. Wilson, near Pasadena, run by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The role: collecting data and operating the 60-inch telescope.

Mueller had begun exploring astronomy by taking a four-week evening class at Griffith Observatory. Drawn to know more, she continued taking classes at USC and Rio Hondo College. As Mueller’s astronomy community grew, her friend Howard Lanning, an astronomer and telescope operator, encouraged her to apply for a position at Mt. Wilson Observatory.

“That was probably when my life changed,” Mueller said. “It had never occurred to me to leave my library job and pursue astronomy. I didn’t have an astronomy degree; I had just taken a handful of classes.”

For as long as she can recall, Mueller has loved the stars. She remembers one specific day in 1958, when she was just 8 years old:

“My brother and I were jumping on the bed, and he told me Halley’s Comet would be visible in 1985.”

Mueller was born in an era when major research telescopes throughout the country still excluded women. Since the early 1900s, although the Carnegie Institution employed women as “computers,” with few exceptions, they were not permitted to use its telescopes. Both Mt. Wilson and Palomar had named their astronomers’ quarters “The Monastery,” male retreats where women were barred from scientific conversations. The male-only housing later became a justification to routinely deny women access to these telescopes.

By the 1950s, women were only beginning to overcome gender barriers to gain access to the telescopes at the Mt. Wilson and Palomar observatories. From Margaret Burbidge to Vera Rubin to Nobel Prize winner Andrea Ghez, pioneering women astronomers built an intergenerational legacy of research and discoveries at Palomar that would transform understanding of the universe forever.

As the first female telescope operator on Palomar, Mueller supported their work, and generations of astronomers. With the expertise and technical training she gained on Palomar, she also began to make her own discoveries.

When Mueller was offered the Mt. Wilson job, she initially worried about the financial risk of changing careers and leaving 10 years of previous experience at USC. But during this time, she chanced to attend a lecture by author Ray Bradbury.

Mueller still remembers the words that led her to take the leap into astronomy. “Whatever you do,” Bradbury advised, “be sure it makes you happy.”

After operating the 60-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson for two and a half years and becoming the first woman to operate the observatory’s 100-inch Hooker Telescope, Mueller interviewed for a new job at Palomar. In 1985, she became the operator for the Samuel Oschin 48-inch telescope, making her the first female telescope operator at the Palomar Observatory. She would stay for 29 years.

“During her first year at Palomar, Mueller worked with Caltech staff astronomer Charles Kowal, who had successfully searched for solar system objects and supernovae. An expert in taking images and scanning the fragile 14-by-14-inch plates that captured data from Palomar’s telescopes during those years, Kowal taught Mueller critical techniques in the complex process.

“Charlie Kowal was the first person to tell me that transient objects like comets and asteroids needed to be identified in a timely manner,” Mueller said. She also learned from Alain J. Maury, a French photographic scientist for the Palomar Observatory Second Sky Survey (POSSII), who taught her astrometry techniques to record the location of celestial objects.

With the encouragement of Kowal and Maury, Mueller began scanning POSSII’s plates, looking for comets, asteroids and supernovae. Scanning involved moving the plate by hand beneath a stationary eyepiece.

“There was something unbelievably exciting about discovering a new comet in the sky,” Mueller said. “A real adrenaline rush.

Mueller learned to operate all three large telescopes on Palomar: the 200-inch Hale Telescope, where she was the senior operator for 15 years; the 60-inch telescope, and the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope.

Over the course of her observational career, Mueller made significant discoveries of her own. Using the Samuel Oschin Telescope, she discovered 15 comets, 13 asteroids — seven of which are near-Earth objects — and 107 supernovae.

And when Comet Halley appeared in the skies in December 1985, Mueller was operating the 200-inch telescope on Palomar. At the time, it was the most powerful telescope in the world.

Since the avian flu arrived en force in California’s dairy industry in 2024, not only has it sickened cows, it has killed hundreds of domestic cats. Some pet cats that live on dairy farms were infected with the H5N1 virus by drinking raw milk. Both pets and feral barn cats got sick after eating raw pet food that harbored the virus. Still others got it by eating infected wild birds, rats or mice, or from contact with dairy workers’ contaminated clothes or boots.

But a new published case suggests that death may be averted if infected cats are treated early with antiviral medications, such as Tamiflu, or oseltamivir. Once treated, these animals may carry antibodies to the virus that makes them resistant to reinfection, at least temporarily.

The discovery was made by Jake Gomez, a veterinarian who treats small animals, such as cats and dogs, as well as large ones, including dairy cows, from his clinic, Cross Street Small Animal Veterinary Hospital, in Tulare.

Last fall, Gomez worked with a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and University of Texas who were in the Central Valley collecting blood samples from outdoor cats at dairy farms, looking to see if they could find antibodies to the H5N1 flu.

Cats are exquisitely sensitive to H5N1; one of the telltale signs that a dairy herd is infected is the presence of dead barn cats.

On Oct. 31, a cat owner brought in an indoor/outdoor cat to Gomez’ clinic that was ADR — a technical veterinarian acronym that stands for “ain’t doing right.”

The cat was up-to-date on all its vaccinations and the owner reported no known exposure to toxic chemicals.

Gomez offered to do blood work and urinalysis to probe more deeply what was going on, but the owner declined. So, Gomez sent them home with an antibiotic and an appetite stimulant. Two days later, the cat died.

It turned out the family had had another cat die just a few days earlier, Gomez said, recalling the visit.

Also during that time, Gomez was treating infected dairy herds around Tulare. Thousands of cows were falling sick from the virus. The family with the sick cats, he learned, lived less than a mile from an infected dairy, and the cat owner worked delivering hay to local dairies, spending time on infected farms.

“Considering how quickly it moved from one cat to the next, it occurred to me it might be H5N1,” he said.

Gomez said he reached out to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture to see if they would test the dead animals for the virus. The agencies, he said, gave him the runaround and he couldn’t get anyone to answer his calls — which he said was perplexing, considering the rapid response when he alerted them to infected cattle.

“If I called to tell them a dairy herd had it, within 24 hours a SWAT team from the USDA and state would be swarming the farm,” he said. But for a cat? Crickets.

On Nov. 6 and 7, the family returned with two more sick cats.

Gomez said he still didn’t know what they had, but had a suspicion they could be infected with H5N1. So, he treated them with the antiviral oseltamivir, known also as Tamiflu, and they recovered.

In March this year, blood samples collected from the two cats showed high levels of antibodies to H5N1 — suggesting the cats had been exposed.

The case was published in the journal One Health.

Kristen Coleman, an airborne infectious disease researcher at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, and an author on the paper, said the findings suggest that cats may be effectively treated and that antiviral medications could help prevent further spread of the virus among cats living in the same home and the humans who care for them.

She said there have been no known transmissions from cats to humans in this outbreak, but there have in the past — in 2005, Thai zookeepers were infected by tigers that had the virus, and in 2016, New York veterinarians at an animal shelter got it from tending to sick cats.

But Jane Sykes, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said she’s not convinced the cats in this case actually had H5N1 — and urged people to read the study with care and caution.

“It’s possible that the positive antibody test results were unrelated to the reasons why those two cats died,” she said. “The virus wasn’t detected in any of the four cats, so infection was not proven.”

And whether the cats recovered because they were treated with Tamiflu, or whether the medication was incidental and they’d have recovered on their own — from another virus, infection or ailment — isn’t clear.

In addition, she said, no one has researched the effects of Tamiflu on cats. And while these two cats appeared to tolerate the drug, that doesn’t mean other cats will.

“Cats metabolize some of the anti-infective compounds very differently than other animals, including people, and they’re quite susceptible to bad side effects of many of these drugs,” she said. “We have to be really careful when we start just using random antiviral drugs that haven’t been studied for safety in cats, because they are so likely to get bad side effects.”

Having said that, she said if she were faced with a similar situation, a high certainty that a cat had been exposed, whether from drinking raw milk or eating raw food that had been infected, she would consider prescribing the medication. But she’d caution her client that it was experimental, and the animal could die from the drug.

She said there are numerous labs across the country that will test blood and urine for the virus.

Sykes urged people not to feed raw food or milk to their pets.

She said she’s seeing more raw food products for pets “and people want them, and they don’t understand the harms and the fact that some of these are contaminated for a long period of time with influenza viruses, like H5N1.”

Neither freezing nor smoking meat kills the virus.

“It’s astonishing how big this industry is getting,” Sykes said. “It’s crazy.”