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.

Locus teams with MCC to provide accelerated groundwater remediation technology

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., 1 November 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental engineering, remediation and information management, announced today an exclusive teaming agreement with MCC Technology, Inc. (MCC) in the application of their patented Closed-Loop Bioreactor Technology. As part of its joint application and marketing partnership with MCC, Locus will be offering this remediation technology to its existing Fortune 500 client base and prospective new clients. MCC has committed to supporting Locus with the operational infrastructure and on-site operation of the remediation technology. The patented Closed-Loop Bioreactor Technology is gaining considerable interest in the engineering community for its ability to rapidly remove phase separated hydrocarbons from groundwater, often in less than 60 days. Likewise, it has the ability dissolve groundwater contaminants quickly, often within a 9-month period or less. Locus believes this technology will offer clients the ability to rapidly obtain closure for their groundwater sites, often in less than a year. The system is effective on common fuel constituents, such as BTEX, as well as pervasive additives, such as MTBE.

“The application of the Closed-Loop Bioreactor Technology will make the closure of complicated groundwater sites a reality. Clients can now make informed business decisions about the value of impaired properties in months, rather than years. Our system will reduce project cleanup schedules often by as much as 75%, allowing the value of impaired property to be realized and credited. Closure costs can now be more precisely defined, with substantial savings compared to traditional technology. The Closed-Loop Bioreactor delivers yet another powerful tool to Locus’s arsenal of cost savings technologies designed to lower cost at environmentally impacted sites,” said Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

 

ABOUT MCC TECHNOLOGIES
MCC provides long-term remediation of soil and groundwater caused by contamination of hydrocarbon-based pollutants. With more than 15 years of experience in remediation, the patented Bio-Sparge(SM) system has recently been approved as an innovative technology for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Locus advises Adtranz and Lucchini Group on sale of manufacturing facilities in United Kingdom and Sweden

PARIS, FRANCE AND WALNUT CREEK, CA., 17 November 2000 — Locus Technologies International, LLC (Locus), a fully owned subsidiary of Locus Technologies, today announced that they acted as environmental consultant to ADtranz and Lucchini Group for environmental due diligence and site investigation during sale of ADtranz Wheelset manufacturing facilities in Manchester, UK and Surahammar, Sweden to the Lucchini Group of Brescia, Italy. The ADtranz facilities being sold produce approximately 50,000 wheels and some 3,200 assembled wheelsets annually for various railway applications. Together, the ADtranz Wheelset plants have more than two centuries of experience in the production of wheels, with the first such activities dating back to 1866 in Surahammar and 1908 in Manchester. Locus performed fast-track field investigation at the Surahammar facility and supervised field investigation performed at the Manchester site. Locus also assisted in review of legal documents and insurance guarantees related to environmental liabilities.

“We are very pleased that Locus was selected to assist ADtranz and Lucchini with this important transaction,” said Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus. “Locus was able to mobilize necessary resources in a short period of time and perform field investigation at manufacturing facilities that have been in operation over a century. This performance demonstrates our ability to provide excellent services to our clients around the globe on short notice. We are also pleased that Lucchini has expanded its relationship with Locus from environmental projects in France and Italy to include newly acquired sites in the UK and Sweden. We believe application of Locus’s award-winning Internet portal, LocusFocus™, to these environmental projects is a big reason for this expansion.”

The Lucchini Group, with 20 plants throughout Europe (10 in Italy, nine in France, and one in Poland), is a leader in the manufacturing of quality long-steel products. The Lucchini Group has annual revenues of 1.7 billion Euros. ADtranz is a leading global provider of railway services, systems, and rolling stock and operates under the legal name “DaimlerChrysler Rail Systems” and had 1999 total sales of 3.5 billion Euros.”

Locus Technologies awarded groundwater implementation at three Philips Semiconductors sites in Silicon Valley, CA

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., 7 July 1999 — Locus Technologies (Locus) today announced that they were awarded a contract for groundwater remediation and operation and maintenance services at three Philips Semiconductors sites in Silicon Valley, CA.

The three sites include Arques (on-site and off-site), Evelyn, and Kifer. Each site has a California Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) Cleanup and Abatement Order and a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Locus’s scope of work includes management of the groundwater program, operation, maintenance, monitoring, and optimization of extraction and treatment systems, information management, automation, permitting, groundwater elevation monitoring and sampling, and regulatory agency reporting.

“This is obviously an important win for us,” said Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies. “It demonstrates our competitiveness and ability to provide Philips Semiconductors with a single source for managing their groundwater programs in the Silicon Valley. We are happy that our approach to groundwater operation and maintenance, VOC experience in the Silicon Valley, and Internet-based automation solutions will help lower the overall cost of the Philips Semiconductors groundwater program.” With this award, Locus reinforces its position as the largest groundwater consultant and remediation company in the Silicon Valley. (The San Jose Business Journal, March 19, 1999).

Project execution will come primarily from Locus Technologies’ office in Mountain View, California. The term of the contract is one year with two optional renewal years. The project started in June 1999.

Locus Technologies awarded remediation system installation at Union Pacific Railroad Yard in Tracy, CA.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., 5 May 1999 — Locus Technologies today announced that they were awarded a contract for groundwater remediation system installation at Union Pacific Railroad’s yard in Tracy, CA.

The remediation project will be managed in four phases: (1) construction of the infiltration trench, (2) construction of the extraction wells, (3) installation of the treatment system, and (4) system automation. As a leader in the field of groundwater treatment and automation, Locus will apply the most advanced techniques for installation of mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, and control systems.

Locus Technologies is thrilled to have the opportunity to install an advanced automated groundwater treatment system at UPRR’s Tracy Yard. This is the third in a series of UPRR groundwater treatment system automation projects awarded to Locus Technologies in recent months. “It clearly demonstrates that Locus’s state-of-the-art Internet-based automation technology, when coupled with system installation, provides significant reduction of the overall cost for groundwater remediation projects. We are pleased that we can transfer those savings to UPRR,” said Mr. Neno Duplancic, President of Locus Technologies.