Posted on 06/06/2006 7:33:52 PM PDT by bannie
The drama
Even if Measure E passes overwhelmingly — as expected — Kern’s fight to keep imported sewage sludge off local farmland will be far from over.
A coalition of Southern California sewage districts and private-industry interests is waiting in the wings to take legal action after votes are counted.
For betting types, the real question might be: How many hours until the first lawsuit is filed?
The background
At its root, Kern’s battle over sludge is something of a David-and-Goliath struggle.
Since the mid-1990s, Southland cities and counties have been trucking their treated human and industrial sewage over the Grapevine. The practice started after federal lawmakers banned ocean dumping the previous decade.
Back in the day, uncovered sludge trucks tooled through Mojave and other spots in eastern Kern, spilling waste along the way, until residents’ complaints alerted county supervisors to the imports.
Supervisors have since tightened sludge farming practices — and been sued every step of the way by the sewage coalition. A years-old lawsuit against the county’s requirement that only the most highly treated sludge be spread on local farmland is still in play.
In the past year or two, Kern’s sludge controversy resurfaced after a few quiet years when Kern County Water Agency officials tried — unsuccessfully — to get application sites voluntarily moved to the west side of the county, away from Kern’s precious groundwater banking areas.
...
A “yes” vote on Measure E is a vote to ban the spreading of sludge on unincorporated farmland in Kern.
Voter-approved initiatives have historically survived courtroom challenges better than rules drafted by county or state officials, Florez claims. ...
Kern has become the de facto Ground Zero for similar rural-urban sludge struggles nationwide — simply because so much of the stuff is trucked here.
(Excerpt) Read more at bakersfield.com ...
They claim that they will keep doing this by tying it up in court for years even if WE SAY, "NO!"
Blah.....I'll take a closer look at where my produce is grown from now on. I am not interested in products grown in "nightsoil."
What a crappy topic like this doing on a site like this?
I'm praying this will go down, but like you say it will be years of fighting in the courts to stop it. With the winds we have out here it should never have been allowed in the first place. It should be trucked and dumped across the border, they wouldn't notice it there.
The Bay Area dumps their sewage on the rest of the state too. Two examples are Boxer and Feinstein.
Once some biotech firm comes up with a bacteria/yeast/enzyme which converts sewage into ethanol, LA will want its waste...
Even now, they tell us that it is "harmless."
THAT must be why they don't want it.
Time to start growing own veggies and herbs - which you can do, even in the city. You don't have to have big garden and grow them all at once.
Grow in "revolving pots" - Salad vegs are the easiest.
Plant, for ex, a flower pot, with lettuce - and radish on the perimeter. Plant a new pot every week. That way,they wont all mature at the same time. If you have or make a shelf in a sunny window - you can grow year round.
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme - the 4 basic herbs - all it takes is 3 small flower pots and one good sized one for the rosemary, that will grow into a 'tree' that you will have for years. Herbs cost MORE than gold.
So grow your own - and not only be healthier - but save $$$
Human waste is toxic - it's not supposed to be used for growing food - we have had enough problems with fruits and vegs contaminated with human waste manure coming from other countries and resulting in serious illness - Which is why now, there must be a notice, for example, on grapes to inform the consumer what country they come from
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