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Redding's Toxic Hellhole Sunday, August 29, 2010 California’s Best Large Newspaper as named by the California Newspaper Publishers Association | $3.00 Gxxxxx• N TOP OF THE NEWS World/Nation Sporting Green Home & Garden 2 Rallies: Glenn Beck 1 49ers-Raiders: Frank Garden to table Travel and Al Sharpton lead Gore, right, and the San Still Easy — New rival marches. A14 Francisco running game — herbs inspire Orleans is alive and 1 Katrina: The fifth look ready; Oakland QB new culinary anniversary of the Campbell injured. B1 possibilities. L1 well 5 years later. M1 devastating floods. A16 Bay Area Datebook Business 1 Attorney general Food & Wine 1 Sex-ad smack- race: Prosecutors attack Fall arts preview down: Conflict over each others’ ethics. C1 Summer favorites — art dance, theater Craigslist’s adult ser- 1 Get real: Raising, — making the most vices section probably cooking and eating and music. 18 will head to court. D1 healthful food. C2 of pesto. K1 SPENDING POLICE SHOOTING Tax Suspect breaks captured under scrutiny in San By Carolyn Lochhead Diego CHRONICLE WASHINGTON BUREAU Officer patrolling WASHINGTON — Washington could nearly near border also eliminate its entire arrests companion $1.3 trillion federal def- icit this year simply by By Matthai Kuruvila closing loopholes in the CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER tax code. Deficit-plagued California could produce As a Fremont police a surplus the same way. Photos by Lance Iversen / The Chronicle officer clung to life From middle-class Saturday, the suspect in handouts such as the Don Bader and Larry Ball of the Bureau of Reclamation pass through a puddle of acid water as they take part in a walking tour of Iron Mountain Mine, one of the world’s most polluted sites. his shooting was cap- child tax credit, to etha- tured in San Diego just Andrew nol giveaways and aid to one block away from the poor, “tax expendi- ENVIRONMENT Barrientos, the U.S.-Mexico border above, was tures” have become the by a sharp-eyed police biggest single spending arrested in officer. the shoot- item in the federal bud- Andrew Barrientos get, reaching $1.1 trillion Inside ‘belly of the beast’ ing of Offi- shot at two Fremont cer Todd this year. officers as they tried to Young, That’s bigger than the arrest him Friday at his below. defense budget, bigger — Redding’s toxic hellhole East Oakland home on than all domestic appro- domestic violence priations, bigger than Iron Mountain’s charges, police said. Medicare and bigger Barrientos then shot at than Social Security, the runoff polluted the driver of a vehicle nation’s largest enti- he tried to carjack be- tlement program. Tax rivers for century fore fleeing in another breaks cost California By Peter Fimrite vehicle taken at gun- $41 billion a year, twice CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER point, police added. the size of its deficit. Despite the barrage, the bullets There is a hardening REDDING — A strange struck only Officer Todd Young, 39, consensus among con- chemical smell lingered in the a married father of two who re- servative and liberal stifling heat as a group of envi- mained in critical but stable condi- economists that any ronmental scientists groped in tion Saturday after surgery at High- deficit reduction include the darkness through one of land Hospital in Oakland. the elimination of such the most polluted places on Barrientos’ unexpected and explo- breaks. Sens. Ron Wy- Earth. sive resistance had worried police, Taxes continues on A16 The Iron Mountain Mine, prompting a statewide alert. In outside of Redding, is a hellish Southern California, officers were pit where acid water sloshes ready. Only in against your boots, greenish “We had information that he was bacterial slime gurgles out of Jared Blumenfeld, regional EPA administrator, walks out coming down here,” said San Diego The Chronicle the walls, and stalactites and onto toxic, rust-colored soil from the abandoned copper mine. police Lt. Andra Brown. “We were stalagmites of acid salt, copper looking for him.” Exclusive to and iron jut out like rusty dag- perfund site. “This is the con- geologists and EPA officials After learning Barrientos was the print edition: Sto- gers. centrated stuff.” who slopped in the dark to- nearing the border, Oakland police ries in today’s “You don’t want to splash The water — so acidic it ward the source of the toxic asked the U.S. Border Patrol to shut Chronicle with this stuff,” said Rick Sugarek, could dissolve fabrics and burn stew that created what experts the crossing — which they did for this logo can be found the U.S. Environmental Protec- skin — lapped against the rub- describe as the “world’s worst about 20 minutes, said Officer Jeff only in The Chronicle’s tion Agency’s project manager ber boots of the scientists, water.” Thomason. print and e-editions at for the Iron Mountain Su- toxic-substance specialists, Toxic continues on A15 Officer continues on A14 this time. They will be online at sfgate.com beginning Tuesday. E- SUNDAY PROFILE Irene Dalis INDEX editions are available for Bay Area...............C1 Home & Garden .........L1 purchase at Books .................F1 Insight................E1 Business...............D1 Editorial .............E10 links.sfgate.com/ Datebook Letters...............E11 ZKFB. Print subscribers Diva behind success All Over Coffee.........33 Lottery................A2 Puzzles.............61-63 Obituaries...........C6-C9 can go to the same link Horoscope .............59 Style .................N1 to sign up for free e- Movies................41 Sports ................B1 editions. of Opera San Jose Food & Wine ...........K1 Travel ................M1 Today’s exclusive stories Weather are: Sunday Profile, By Joshua Kosman glare, “that it was preposter- Partly cloudy Iron Mountain and Tax CHRONICLE MUSIC CRITIC ous to expect everyone else to and mild. Breaks on A1, Native wait around for her. I pointed Highs: 58-85. Son on A2, Willie To experience the full tingle out that in this business, it Lows: 49-54. C4-C5 Brown and Matier & of relief at not being in some- wasn’t enough to be talented — Ross on C1, Kathleen one else’s shoes, it’s only nec- you also have to work hard Pender on D1, Miss essary to hear Irene Dalis tell and be on time. Show up late Bigelow on N3, Bruce about the young soprano who or unprepared, and you simply Jenkins on B1, Scott Chad Ziemendorf / The Chronicle arrived 10 minutes late for an won’t be re-engaged.” Ostler on B1 and B2, Mezzo-soprano Irene Dalis opera rehearsal. Then she adds, with a John Shea on B6 and founded Opera San Jose “I told her,” says Dalis, fix- knowing, semi-indulgent Tom Stienstra on B12. in 1984 and still runs it. ing her listener with a gimlet Dalis continues on A12 A12 | Sunday, August 29, 2010 | San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com GXXXXX FROM THE COVER The grande dame of Opera San Jose Dalis from page A1 “When I went onstage, chuckle, “She won’t be late to a re- it was either to kill hearsal again.” someone or to be killed. That combination of fierce standards and measured generosity is character- I never got the man.” istic of Dalis, and it’s one of the rea- Irene Dalis, founder of Opera San Jose sons for the continued success of Opera San Jose, the company she founded in 1984 and still runs in a top-down fashion. At 84, Dalis seems part grandma, which she is, and part That structure engenders a spirit of diva, which she used to be. camaraderie and collaboration among Opera buffs of sufficient vintage will the artists, but it has also restricted the remember her powerful appearances company’s programming somewhat — as a dramatic mezzo-soprano through “Anna Karenina” is the rare contempo- the 1960s and ’70s. She appeared at rary offering amid a stream of man- most of the world’s leading opera ageable Italian and French repertory houses, including the Metropolitan works. Opera in New York, San Francisco “It’s hard to find operas that will Opera, Germany’s Bayreuth and Lon- show most of our singers at an ad- don’s Covent Garden. vantage. And this is San Jose, Califor- But since retiring from the stage at nia, and we have to sell tickets.” 50 — a decision she says she made well in advance, when she was just starting ‘So grateful to her’ out — Dalis has been assiduously Among Dalis’ boosters is Janet Gray tending to generations of young sing- Hayes, a former San Jose mayor and ers in her home town. onetime director of the San Jose Muse- “I’m convinced that whatever power um of Art. leads us through life planned that I “Irene’s presence has been fantastic, would have an international career in and the company has added immea- opera,” she says, “just so I would come surably to our artistic value as a city,” home and build a company.” she says. “We are so grateful to her for Courtesy Irene Dalis coming back to her home community.” Irene Dalis was Princess Eboli in “Don Carlos” at the Metropolitan Opera Repertory house In addition to nurturing young tal- in 1957. She specialized in roles that involved more mayhem than romance. Opera San Jose, which opens its ent, Dalis takes a visible pride in the season on Sept. 11 with the West Coast fiscal responsibility with which she’s premiere of David Carlson’s 2008 run Opera San Jose. The company has opera “Anna Karenina,” is the rare run a deficit only once in 26 years: American opera company designed on Last year it was in the red by $35,000 the model of the European repertory on an annual operating budget of $4 houses where Dalis got her profession- million (compared with about $70 al start.
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