The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 85

VIEW Cos Anaclcs (Times Thursday. January 10, 1985Part Action Facing the Problem of Disposal of Toxic Household Waste Consumer Home as a House of Cards flRTHn tSS Scr Knar Bait And, even though the couple read labels and worried about properly disposing of the materials, they couldn't figure how to do it. So, "we left the paint in the garage it matched the house," Tomblin said. "We brought the insecticides with us, and I put the rest in a giant Hefty bag and threw it in the trash." Realizing that their outside-the-letter-of-the-law activity was going to wind up in print, Tomblin worried about legal retribution. But the couple really do not have to be concerned, Griffith said.

The county realizes there is no economical system available, and "even those of us in the program would have to admit no one is going to call a hazardous -waste hauler and pay $300 to dispose of a half-gallon of paint." But the situation appears about to change and Griffith has been the man in charge of making it happen. Waste Roundup Days Last week the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved a proposal by Griffith and his task force to schedule Hazardous Waste Roundup Days, allowing homeowners and businesses to bring limited amounts of hazardous and toxic wastes probably anything except radioactive or explosive material, Griffith said to an announced site on a specific day. According to the board action, the first roundup will be a pilot project probably in April and probably in the 2nd District (which includes Cypress, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Seal Beach, Stanton, Sunset Beach and Westminster) served by Supervisor Harriett Wieder, who asked for the task force study. Although the city of Irvine did hold a local roundup last October, this will be the first county-sponsored effort, Griffith said. He expects additional collection days to be sponsored in other parts of the county.

After that first roundup, the county willevaluate its success and then determine the need for future events, Griffith said, adding that he would be surprised if the first roundup was not successful. Such a program, he said, fills a Please see DISPOSAL, Page 17 By LIZ McGUINNESS Yvonne Tomblin recalled the frustration she and her husband, Ralph, faced when they moved from a five-bedroom, three-bath, three-car-garage home in Huntington Beach to a much smaller home with no garage in Laguna Beach. The problem wasn't just in trying to squeeze extra roomfuls of belongings into reduced space but also how to get rid of some of the materials they wanted to dump. Although many homeowners about to make a move apparently are unaware of the problem, it is illegal to dump many of the "leftovers" from home ownership: the paints, insecticides, solvents, cleaning fluids, the drain cleaners and used automobile oil all of which legally fall under the heading of "hazardous materials." No Simple Alternative The Catch -22 is that there has been no simple, inexpensive legal way to dispose of such materials. State law says unequivocally that all hazardous materials must be disposed of in a licensed treatment or disposal facility, which generally means a Class 1 landfill, the kind that can accept hazardous and toxic materials.

But the only two such landfills still serving Southern California are in Santa Barbara and Kings counties. Trash collectors in residential areas are licensed only to use Class 2 sanitary landfills, which can accept the routine household garbage, paper goods and other nontoxic materials. Legally, residential collectors may not accept old cans of paint and half -empty bottles of insecticide. "We don't have numbers on violations, but there has to be a lot of illegal dumping going on because there's no realistic alternative to inappropriate disposal," said Bob Griffith, executive officer of Orange County's Hazardous Material Task Force. "Many people don't even know they're disposing of wastes illegally.

There is not much understanding by the public at large that hazardous waste not only comes from industrial sources but from homeowners themselves." Griffith said Orange County and individual city sanitation districts are planning a public education throw out these and many other GLENN KOENIG items with household trash. State law makes it a crime to effort that will start as soon as possible with print and broadcast advertising and expand in the spring to include presentations before community service organizations. "The hazardous material of one homeowner is rarely enough to sible to set up any kind of regulatory or inspection program for homeowners." Yvonne Tomblin recalled that she and her husband did worry about disposing of some of their material especially from the By DONG. CAMPBELL, Times Staff Writer Question: Please write an article on how a homeowner should deal with a building or roofing contractor. How can the homeowner protect himself against such things as unethical liens, performance bonds and completion notices? I understand that some contractors operate under a third-party license and are not genuine contractors.

Answer: You can go further than "a third-party license." How about no license at all? According to studies made a few years ago of the home-remodeling business in California, it was estimated that the homeowner who contracts for a substantial remodeling job would face these obstacles: There is a l-in-2 chance of ending up with a contractor who isn't licensed to do business in the first place and is, therefore, accountable to no one. There is a l-in-3 chance of getting a licensed contractor, all right, but one who obtained that license by perjuring himself. There is a l-in-3 chance that the job contracted for won't be finished on schedule. There is a 7-in-10 chance that the contractor doing the work for him will be out of business within three years. There is a l-in-5 chance of getting ripped off for all, or a substantial portion, of the money he has laid out.

"And, if anything," Woodland Hills attorney Jerry D. Kove says, "the situation is worse now than it was when See CONSUMER, Page 16 los Glidden, Samuel Soule and Christopher Sholes. "The keyboard on their original patent was simply alphabetic," Russell explained. "In those days, though, everything was hunt and peck. And if a typist went too fast, the keys stuck.

"Sholes developed about 25 alternate keyboards, but the one that caught on was QWERTY, which tended to lessen key -sticking." By the time touch-typing came on the scene decades later, after gun manufacturer E. Remington Sons had put the word machine on the market, QWERTY was well entrenched as the keyboard to be taught. "In the early 1930s, however, August Dvorak and his brother-in-law William Dealey took a statistics course at Brown University," Russell said. "The teacher suggested to them that they look into the typewriter keyboard as it related to frequency of letter usage in the English language." Dvorak, a professor of education at the University of Washington, and Dealey, a professor of education at North Texas State University, got a grant from the Carnegie Foundation. Until recently what they came Please see DVORAK, Page 20 Plans to Resume Column mental work and Denny (his wife) is doing the manual labor," Smith said.

He is "up and around" and plans to resume his column when he gets a bit stronger. View Battle of the Typewriter Keyboards Dvorak Design Offered as Alternative to QWERTY By DAVE LARSEN, Times Staff Writer ti Urn irii'n -Sm "foi i cause a problem by itself, but when you multiply it by the 2 million people in Orange County, then you've got a much bigger problem," he said. "Unlike hazardous pollution from industrial sources that are controllable and can be inspected and regulated, it's impos Los Angeles Times Norman L. Stewart, the president of Rockford (III.) College. Stewart has worked out with other educational institutions.

Moreover, it's the only college in central London with a real campus trees personal computers. Is there life after QWERTY? "Studies have shown that in an eight-hour day the fingers of a QWERTY typist travel 16 miles," Virginia Russell said by phone from her home in Brandon, Vt. "The fingers of a Dvorak typist go only one mile." Russell can make such statements because she is president of the Dvorak International Federation, described as a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting the maverick keyboard. "People used to think of us as an Esperanto cult type of thing," she said, referring to the international language. "But of late I have been dealing with organizations such as the U.

S. Department of Agriculture, the Social Security Administration, the Ford Motor Co. and several of the major insurance companies." OK, so what is this desecration of the sacred typing system we all know and love so well? Typing machines have been around a long time. The first recorded patent of one was to a London engineer in 1714. The most famous one was issued in 1868 to three Milwaukee inventors Car Smith 'Up and Around'; Columnist Jack Smith, recuperating at home from a heart ailment, reports that he is keeping busy redecorating the family home on Mt.

Washington. "I am doing the Inside Legal VIEW Selecting the Right Attorney By JEFFREY S.KLEIN Shopping for a lawyer can be expensive, but only if you make the wrong choice. Each year, the California State Bar receives thousands of complaints from clients about their lawyers. In 1983 there were 8,094 complaints about the 84,000 lawyers in the state, according to a State Bar spokeswoman. The complaints ranged from violating an attorney-client confidence to skipping town with a client's money.

That's why it is important to shop carefully for a lawyer. You want to find an ethical one, but you also need one who is experienced with the kind of legal problem you have. So, how do you find a lawyer? Some Suggestions Here are some suggestions: Talk to friends. Ask friends and neighbors who have had legal problems about the lawyers they used and whether the lawyers did a good job. Contact the local bar association.

In Los Angeles, the County Bar operates a Lawyer Referral and Information Service; the phone number is 622-6700. The service offers a 30-minute consultation with a lawyer for $20. It also has a program to refer low-income clients to lawyers who will accept reduced fees. Other local bar associations offer similar referral services. Talk to business colleagues and other professionals.

If you work for a large company with its own legal staff, the in -house counsel Please see LEGAL, Page 16 Barbara Blackburn has made a name for herself with strikes. And a job action is what it is, although not in the usual sense. When Blackburn is at an office typewriter, the company gets its money's worth. She strikes the keyboard at a rate of 150 words a minute, which has earned her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Not bad for someone who was dreadful in her high school typing class back in Pleasant Hill, Mo.

"I was in the running to be valedictorian of my class in 1938," she recalled. "But I couldn't even reach the required 50 words per minute in typing, and the grade that I received pulled my whole average down." She, as is the case with most typists today, was using the familiar QWERTY system, named for six letters on the left side of the keyboard. "I don't know if I could even have gotten a job, much less be in the Guinness book, if it hadn't been for Dvorak," Blackburn said. That isn't on any row of keys. It is a special keyboard patented in 1936, little known and less used for decades, but now surging into popularity because of the emergence of and grass and all that.

Reciting these facts, as he did on a recent visit to Los Angeles, makes Stewart very cheerful indeed. He has scored an academic coup, it seems, beating out competitors much more accustomed to international enterprise, to lease the 10-acre campus in Regent's Park from the Crown. The Chronicle of Higher Education, a U.S. education journal, called the location "one of the world's choice academic sites, set amid the trees and ornamental gardens of London's Regent's Park." "It was my idea to promote a large program for Rockford College students overseas," Stewart explained, adding that his initial Please see ROCKFORD, Page 8 PENNI GLADSTONE Barbara Blackburn's speed on Dvorak keyboard has set records. Tiny Rockford Nabs a London Campus By GARRY ABRAMS, Times Staff Writer Global ambitions lurk in unlikely places.

An hour's drive from Chicago, for instance. There in resolutely Midwestern, industrial Rockford, 111. Norman L. Stewart, the cheerful 43-year-old president of tiny Rockford College, has reached across the Atlantic and under the noses of bidders from Hong Kong, Japan and Saudi Arabia to acquire a London campus from the Queen of England. This fall the first batch of about 100 students from Rockford will begin their semester abroad in Great Britain a semester that doesn't cost extra because of the elaborate financial arrangements BRIDGE: Alfred Sheinwold column.

Page 18. DEAR ABBY: Grandmother doesn't want to butt out. Page 5. YOU FEA TURES BEGIN ON PAGE 9. 54 HOURS: Day-by-day guide to weekend activities.

Ten astronomical phenomena to observe in the night sky. Debra Whitefield's money column will appear on Thursdays in the Business Section, beginning today..