Locus to help Companies Comply with Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 for Environmental Liability Management

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 13 April 2004 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leading provider of web-based environmental information management systems, today announced that their new release of LocusFocus portal, scheduled for release in summer 2004, will help public companies comply with the corporate governance requirements in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which congress passed in 2002 in the law in response to a series of corporate financial crises. LocusFocus already addresses many aspects of management of company’s environmental liability such as analytical data management, auditing, and document management. Additional functionality will include Environmental, Health, and Safety (EH&S) reporting and financial management of environmental liability, which companies are developing in response to governance requirements. As a part of Balance Sheet reporting, publicly traded companies must report their environmental liabilities and reserve.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates more rigorous corporate governance practices for all aspects of a company’s business including recognition, measurement, display and disclosure of environmental liabilities. Given the increased emphasis on corporate accountability and the penalties and personal liability to CEOs and CFOs for non-compliance, companies are evaluating ways to increase the accuracy of assessing and quantifying environmental liabilities. Locus’s new updated portal is designed to meet this growing need and to provide a tool to help companies organize, manage, and document their environmental liabilities.

“In order to minimize the possibility of erroneous or misleading disclosure, companies increasingly rely on consultants to assist in evaluating internal controls and disclosure procedures, conduct due diligence, analyze and document environmental liabilities, and review existing environmental liability disclosures for compliance with applicable securities laws. Now the companies, their consultants, and legal staff have a tool to document and manage all aspects of environmental liability in a way that was not possible before. By keeping all information about contaminated sites in a single, centralized, secure, web-based system, companies can aggregate information in real time, check the cleanup status of every site, monitor financial performance of consultants and contractors, and most importantly have real time corporate environmental reserve and liability information at their fingertips”, said Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

Companies that subscribe to use LocusFocus will make better use of resources and find it easier to comply with US and international environmental requirements, while at the same time lowering their operating costs associated with environmental information management.

By providing a systematic structure for planning, internal auditing and reviewing environmental information, LocusFocus enables companies to meet and exceed environmental requirements as well as enhance their credibility with customers, stakeholders and the public.

Water Disposal May be Avoided at GI Dump

Middletown Times Star

Read the Press Release Here

Locus presents paper on EPA SEDD format at PITTCON 2004

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 31 March 2004 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, presented a paper on the use of the EPA SEDD format with web-based environmental data systems at the 2004 Pittsburgh Conference (Pittcon) in Chicago, IL. Dr. Todd Pierce of Locus authored the paper entitled “A Web-based Solution for Analytical Data Interchange Using EPA XML-Based SEDD Format and Locus’s EIM System.” The paper was presented on March 7 during the “New Developments in Analytical Instrumentation and Software” session.

The Staged Electronic Data Deliverable (SEDD) is an inter-agency effort spearheaded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to create a generic format for electronic delivery of analytical data for environmental programs. A major advantage for analytical laboratories is that SEDD can be implemented in stages. This fact allows laboratories to meet EDD requirements for multiple programs without having to overhaul their EDD-producing systems as agency or program needs change. The SEDD is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), which has quickly become the de facto standard for information exchange over the Internet. XML provides data integration and communication backbone for Locus’s EIM system.

Dr. Pierce’s paper showed how Locus’s award-winning, web-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) system, a part of their LocusFocusSM environmental web portal, can import EDDs in the SEDD format. EIM accepts SEDD files in Stage 2a format, which contains the basic analytical results (including the sample ID, analyte, result, and qualifier) plus method quality control data. The EIM import module includes data verification and consistency checks outlined in the Document Type Definition (DTD) for Stage 2a, as well as forms for viewing the data in the imported SEDD file. EIM then lets users create reports, build graphs, query selected results, and download selected datasets into Microsoft Excel, ESRI’s ArcView, or other third-party packages.

Locus announces completion of US EPA Region 5 environmental protection reporting requirements

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 5 February 2004 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, announced today that it has expanded its award winning, web-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) system to include the capability of exporting data in compliance with the US EPA Region V Geographic Information System and Field Environmental Decision support system.

The Region V FIELDS software forms the foundation for an EPA system that provides data analysis and interpretation for environmental decision-making. The results allow EPA project managers to evaluate the extent of contamination and hot spot sizes, estimate health risks, prioritize site goals, and weigh potential actions. Users include US EPA Regions, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s coastal restoration scientists, state and tribal agencies, as well as the private and academic community.

EIM™’s compatibility with Region V’s requirements will open a whole region to the EIM™ data management system. Now, companies and agencies with projects located in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, and the 35 Tribal Nations in those areas can feel confident when selecting EIM™ to manage their environmental data.

“We are very pleased that EIM™ now provides export ability consistent with US EPA Region V requirements. By bringing EIM™ technology to its customers in the upper Midwest, Locus has provided the first web-based tool to upload and transmit vast amounts of sampling data to EPA Region V from a centralized web system. The EIM™ system links laboratories, clients, and their consultants to EPA Region V through a seamless web-based interface. By leveraging Web Services and XML technologies, Locus continues to provide its customers with a cost-competitive, centralized analytical information management system that is superior to any client-server system available in the marketplace today,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

“As our client base continues to grow throughout the nation, Locus is committed to meeting all federal and state electronic data deliverables for the environmental industry, including the XML-based, federal SEDD, once it has been approved,” added Dr. Duplancic.

SLAC to implement LocusFocus environmental data system

System to Help SLAC Uphold a Commitment to Environmental Stewardship

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 14 January 2004 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, today announced that Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) selected its web-based Environmental Information Management System (EIM[TM]) and LocusFocus(SM) environmental portal for management of important environmental data and information at their 430-acre Stanford campus located in Menlo
Park, California. EIM™ and the LocusFocus(SM) environmental portal are award-winning web-based tools for enterprise environmental information management.

Locus’s environmental data management system will be used by SLAC as a key part of their commitment to environmental stewardship. LocusFocus(SM) will be used to support SLAC’s environmental management needs, including data consolidation, multimedia evaluations, environmental restoration data analysis and reporting (including reporting California GeoTracker EDF format), document management, graphical analysis, statistical analysis, and spatial analysis and mapping.

“We are very pleased to have been selected by SLAC to provide solutions and support to the complex world of environmental data management,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus Technologies. “What is especially gratifying is that LocusFocus(SM) was selected after an exhaustive analysis of competing systems and approaches. We are proud to be the solution that will help SLAC achieve a more focused, streamlined, and quality focused data management process that will help them achieve their long-term goals in environmental stewardship,” added Dr. Duplancic.

Locus’s EIM™ and LocusFocus(SM) web-based environmental data management systems provide clients a streamlined, easy to use, easy to access, comprehensive package to manage the wealth of data and information collected and developed as part of environmental activities. As the first system developed for the web, LocusFocus(SM) gives clients instant and universal access to data previously stored in non-integrated diverse silo systems. As part of Locus’s services, their data migration experts will assist clients in efficiently resolving historical data issues and creating economical, useful, secure, and accessible web-based data for all team members to share, collaborate, report, and archive.

Locus expands Environmental Information Management (EIM) system with ability to export data directly into Arcview 8 GIS from ESRI

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 11 November 2003 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, today announced that it has expanded its award winning, web-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) system, a part of their LocusFocusSM web portal, to include the capability of exporting data directly to the ArcView 8 Geographical Information System (GIS) from Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). Based in Redlands California, ESRI is the industry leader in geospatial applications and technology. ArcView 8 GIS is rapidly becoming the standard for geographical analysis and is based on the highly successfully ArcView 3.x program, which has sold more than a million copies.

An EIM™ user now can connect to EIM™ by using a Locus toolbar in the ArcView 8 interface. The toolbar, built on Web Services and Microsoft’s .NET technology, lets the user query EIM™ for analytical, groundwater or field-reading data. Query results are automatically added to the ArcView 8 map as an ESRI shapefile. The new ArcView link to EIM™ reflects Locus’s commitment to building an enterprise system that allows national or multi-national companies to meet their diverse data management needs and reporting requirements across the U.S. and around the world. Other recent enhancements to the system give companies even more flexibility in exporting their data to a variety of formats, including Microsoft Excel and AutoCAD .dxf files, while still allowing all the company’s data to reside in a single repository.

“ArcView is the world’s most popular desktop GIS and mapping software, with more than 500,000 copies in use worldwide. It was critical that EIM™ support users who employ ArcView for their spatial analysis needs. The new Locus toolbar for ArcView 8 lets users seamlessly query their EIM™ data and put the results on a site map. Users who have invested time and money in ArcView 8 customizations and programming do not have to abandon that commitment to take advantage of EIM™’s rich suite of environmental management tools. By leveraging Microsoft’s .NET technology and XML as the underlying structure for the ArcView link, Locus remains on the leading edge of web-enabled environmental software integration.” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus.

LocusFocus(SM) is a multi-channel, dynamic Web portal that provides for all aspects of environmental site management. LocusFocus(SM) has the potential of bringing the benefits of Internet technology to the environmental industry and, as such, eliminate the many inefficiencies and incompatible technologies that afflict the industry.

Locus Wins Geothermal, Inc. Facility Closure Project

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 6 October 2003 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental consulting and construction services, announced today that it has been awarded a contract to provide design-build services for closure of the Geothermal Inc. (GI) Facility Closure Project. The contract will be performed over a three-year period.

The GI Facility is an inactive disposal facility located near Middletown, Lake County, California. The facility includes seven surface impoundments and two disposal trenches that accepted liquid and solid waste from the geothermal energy exploration and production fields. The non-hazardous waste is a mixture of geothermal well drilling fluids and other geothermal power plant wastes. The three-year facility closure will consist of completing the final engineering design and necessary closure documents, obtaining necessary permits, and performing closure construction activities. The waste will be solidified and capped with a low-permeability engineered closure cover system consisting of a geomembrane barrier layer, geocomposite drainage layer, and clean vegetated soil cover. Pond liquids will be treated using reverse-osmosis and thin-film solar evaporation technologies. In addition, phytoremediation will be used to lower groundwater to achieve the required separation from the waste. Disposal trenches will be excavated, solidified, and consolidated into the closure cells. When implemented, closure will assure the long-term protection of human health and environment.

GI’s owners and operators abandoned the site in 1986 and filed for bankruptcy before posting their required closure bond. Consequently, 17 companies that disposed of material at GI are financing the closure. A Site Management Committee with top environmental staff from five of the companies has been planning the closure. Under the contract, Locus will provide turnkey professional consulting, engineering, and construction services for remedial
construction.

“We are very pleased to be selected by the GI Site Management Committee to close the GI site. This further demonstrates Locus’s ability to provide turnkey consulting and construction services to our clients on complex, multidisciplinary soil and groundwater sites. We will be working closely with the Cooperating Entities, other specialty consultants, regulators, and the public to implement the remedy and restore the site,” said Dr. Neno
Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

Chevron Environmental Management Company selects Locus’ web portal for environmental laboratory data management

SAN FRANCISCO, 30 September 2003 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, today announced that Chevron Environmental Management Company, a subsidiary of ChevronTexaco Corporation, San Ramon, California, has selected Locus’s web-based Environmental Information Management System™ (EIM™) for management of Chevron’s Environmental Laboratory Data at their environmental remediation projects. EIM™ is a module of Locus’s award-winning LocusFocus(SM) web portal for environmental information management.

As a part of an effort to consolidate analytical data and provide uniform environmental database management practices across its organization, Chevron Environmental Management Company decided to utilize a web-based system and will start using LocusFocus(SM) immediately.

Using a web-based system to organize and manage large amounts of environmental information, EIM™ provides users real-time access to crucial information that heretofore had been stored in distributed systems accessible to only a few. The development and deployment of these web-based databases requires deep content knowledge and years of experience developing applications for the environmental industry. Locus’s core team has more than 60 years of experience in this area and has worked with clients ranging from numerous Fortune 500 companies to the Department of Energy and the US military. Locus believes its dual expertise in content knowledge and computer applications has enabled it to develop the best-available tool to manage environmental information in existence today. LocusFocus(SM) is built on a robust infrastructure that leverages the latest web technologies, such as XML and Web Services, and utilizes advanced security and backup devices and tools to protect each client’s data.

“Clearly, the bet we are placing on web-based environmental software is a big one. And part of what makes it big is that it encompasses a solution to a problem that could not have been delivered to the environmental industry without the web. Environmental projects generate huge amounts of data that need to be analyzed and put to beneficial use. Complex and expensive decisions hinge on the accessibility, quality, and ease of use of this data, all of which better software tools can help to alleviate. Driving the content and technology solution at the same time requires a lot of work, but it is necessary, if one aspires to lead this industry. We are happy to have Chevron Environmental Management Company join the family of Locus clients,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus Technologies.

“There are many assets trapped in inefficient environmental information management, including excessive man hours to load laboratory deliverables, search for information, and produce reports. Companies are now pragmatically adopting these new technologies to improve the bottom line of their environmental projects,” added Duplancic.

Locus selects LiveVault to ensure the recoverability of its critical environmental data

Locus Technologies will provide its customers with guaranteed recovery through LiveVault

MARLBOROUGH, MASS. AND SAN FRANCISCO, CA, 5 AUGUST 2003 — LiveVault Corporation® (www.livevault.com), the leading provider of fully managed online backup and recovery services for business servers, and Locus Technologies (www.locustec.com), the leader in information management technology for the environmental industry, today announced that Locus has selected LiveVault Online Backup and Recovery Service™ to protect its customers’ critical environmental and business data. Locus Technologies’ customers are a number of Fortune-500 companies who subscribe to LocusFocus(SM) to manage their critical environmental information through Locus’s environmental portal.

“We are very pleased that our partnership with LiveVault will provide online backup and guaranteed recovery for our award-winning, web-based environmental information management portal, LocusFocus(SM) and EIM™,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies. “Now, large enterprise environmental information management applications have fully secured, controlled, web-based solutions through LocusFocus and EIM™, that are fully protected by LiveVault against system failure, virus, human error or other disaster.” Locus Technologies subscribes to LiveVault through channel partner US Data Trust (www.usdatatrust.com).

“It certainly demonstrates the value LiveVault’s online backup and recovery service provides when a trusted provider like Locus Technologies trusts LiveVault to protect their customers’ critical data,” said Bob Cramer, president and CEO of LiveVault. “LiveVault’s continuous online backup, and recovery guarantee, ensures that environmental and other data intensive businesses are always protected. Not just the data created last week, or last night, but the data created today, this minute, this hour.” LiveVault’s Online Backup and Recovery Service continuously backs up business server data via a secure Internet connection, and immediately stores it in an off-site Iron Mountain® (NYSE: IRM) facility, where it is available for immediate recovery in the event of a system failure, virus, human error or other disaster.

The LiveVault service is designed for customers with servers that reside outside of major data centers—such as remote or branch offices, or mid-sized businesses—and who have primarily relied on in-house tape backups to keep their data safe. Analysts estimate that nearly 50 percent of tape-based backups fail to restore properly, exposing these businesses to significant risk. Conversely, LiveVault guarantees recovery of all business-critical data
and allows companies to return to the state of their business prior to a data-loss event. For more information on LiveVault’s data protection and disaster recovery solutions, please visit www.livevault.com or call (800) 638-5518. For more information on Locus Technologies solutions for the environmental industry, now with data protected by LiveVault, please visit www.locustec.com or call (925) 906-8100.

 

ABOUT LIVEVAULT
LiveVault Corporation is the leading provider of fully managed online data backup and recovery services. LiveVault automatically and continuously backs up server data, and protects it in a secure, remote Iron Mountain facility, and makes it immediately available for recovery 7×24. Through its partnerships with Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and others, LiveVault helps ensure the business continuity of mid-sized businesses, as well as distributed offices of larger enterprises. Founded in 1993, LiveVault is based in Marlborough, Mass. For more information, visit www.livevault.com or call (508) 460-6670.

Locus Announces Completion of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Reporting Requirements

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 23 July 2003 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, today announced that it has expanded its award winning, web-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™ system, to include the capability of importing and exporting data in compliance with New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Site Remediation Program (SRP).

As part of New Jersey’s participation in the National Environmental Performance Partnership System (NEPPS), the SRP is developing groundwater indicators to show progress in ground water contamination cleanup. The SRP has issued regulations requiring analytical results of sampling data to be submitted electronically and in a GIS-compatible format. Using this information, the SRP plans to delineate changes in the aerial extent of each groundwater plume to evaluate environmental progress in cleaning up contaminated sites.

Addressing the issue of voluminous hardcopy data submissions, the SRP requires that all sites presently being remediated within New Jersey submit their data in electronic format. Moving away from hardcopy data submission has the potential to accelerate the review and statistical manipulation of information, significantly enhancing NJDEP’s ability to service the regulated community and protect the environment and the public. The agency is already collecting massive amounts of data, therefore, the need to be able to process this information quickly and accurately is a growing concern. With Locus’s incorporation of the SRP standard, EIM™ users now have the tools they need to import and export NJDEP data formats.

“We are very pleased that EIM™ now provides interoperability with NJDEP requirements. By bringing EIM™ technology to its customers in New Jersey, Locus has provided the first web-based tool to upload and transmit vast amounts of sampling data to the state from a centralized web system. The EIM™ system links laboratories, clients, and their consultants to the state through a seamless web-based interface. By leveraging Web Services and XML technologies, Locus continues to provide its customers with a cost-competitive, centralized analytical information management system that is superior to any client-server system available in the marketplace today,” said Mr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

“Only three months after announcing California’s Water Resources Control Board AB2886 reporting requirements compatibility, Locus has delivered another important state standard. Locus is committed to meeting all federal and state electronic data deliverables for the environmental industry, including the XML-based, federal SEDD, once it has been approved,” added Dr. Duplancic.