ENVIRONMENT: Mothers of Prevention

For years the barrios of largely Latino East Los Angeles have been a dumping ground for unwanted projects, from noisy freeway interchanges to no fewer than six jails. But last week, after six years of agitation marked by four lawsuits, 16 hearings and six mile-long protest marches, the 400-strong Mothers of East L.A. passed around cookies to celebrate a major victory: cancellation of a proposed commercial incinerator they claimed could spew cancer-causing particles over the community by burning 22,500 tons of used motor oil and industrial sludge annually. Citing “political pressure” and the prospect of “interminable litigation,” attorneys for Security Environmental Systems, which was to build the facility, ruefully announced “abandonment” of the project.