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Gas tank website has new additionsThis article was originally published in the the Amador Ledger Dispatch on June 23, 1999, and is reproduced here with its permission. By Diane Smith JACKSON—"Would you like to know how your life, family and home can be destroyed by official outlaws posing as environmental cops? Would you like to see how thousands of good citizens and many responsible law enforcement officials are now providing tons of information to this website to correct this injustice?" Those questions and a good portion of documentation preface the website history of www.pushback.com/justice, a computer address established by bay-area webmaster, Peter Sheerin. The title, "How We Became Involved" is the most recent addition to the gastankgate saga. And KGO Radio 810 personality, Bill Wattenburg of San Francisco does the lengthy preface piece on how he became involved in a case which happened more than a year ago and is expected to come to trial in September. The site and its contents are copyrighted. Wattenburg reports how he learned from a listener, about the circumstances and how he broadcast it over the air. "I couldn't believe the Womack story. I called the Amador Courthouse. It was True." And then, he relates how he called state officials when he heard the removed tank was already an EPA-approved double-walled tank and confirmed that those upgrades were not the targets of the environmental safety campaigns. Double standardsWattenburg, a scientist, teacher, author and weekend broadcast host, also addresses what he cites as a double standard: while the Womack case was ongoing, other county violations were occurring with illegal underground tanks being used past the EPA deadline, and by the county, he says. [Wattenburg] had pointed these out in his broadcasts as well as giving official notice of the violations to the county district attorney's office. Wattenburg goes a step further in his preface by telling how he "discovered an official Cal/EPA manual which instructs prosecutors how to entrap and intimidate selected victims so that they will buckle, pay huge fines levied not by a judge but by the secret police and admit to crimes; thereby precluding troublesome judges and juries from meddling in the proper business of the secret police." HistoryIn May of 1998, Robert Womack got a City of Jackson permit to pull a tank from a former Jackson service station site. Amador environmental officials and the county district attorney and special prosecutor from the California District Attorneys Association later claimed Womack should have done the job under county jurisdiction. In the ensuing year, several searches were conducted at the Womack home and single searches took place at the family accountant's office and the Mark Sherrill home. An excavator dug holes for two days at the Previtalli Road home of one of Womack's adult sons. At this time, the website has had some 50,000 hits. Copyright © 1999 Amador Ledger Dispatch |
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