Posted on 12/12/2004 9:09:33 AM PST by NormsRevenge
HILMAR, Merced County - For more than a decade, California water-quality enforcers have given the world's largest cheese factory a free ride, sparing the politically connected company millions of dollars in required sewage treatment and allowing it to foul local water supplies and the air of nearby neighborhoods.
Every day, Hilmar Cheese Co. makes a million pounds of cheddar, Colby, mozzarella and Monterey Jack at its sprawling factory south of Turlock and dumps an average 700,000 gallons of putrid waste onto nearby land leased from company owners and supplying dairies.
And virtually every day for the past 16 years, state records show, the wastewater's volume and salinity have far exceeded limits imposed by the state's Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board to keep the groundwater drinkable for neighbors. The water board has recorded at least 4,000 violations against Hilmar Cheese in the past four years alone, making it one of California's most chronic offenders of clean-water laws.
Yet, for years not a single fine or injunction was issued. Instead of cracking down, the Valley water board kept raising the limit on wastewater volume at the cheese maker's request, as production kept growing. Board records show regulators agreed to increases four times in eight years - 1990 through 1997 - each time counting on company promises to cut pollution. Often the fixes did not follow. Sometimes they flopped.
"This is a clear case of environmental injustice," said Rafael Maestu, who last year reviewed the state's file on Hilmar Cheese as an inspector for California's nine regional water boards.
"Basically, they are above the law," Maestu said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Blue state environmentalism.
Bad for the møøses drinking downstream.
I'm about eight miles away. It's on my route to Santa Cruz when I visit my children at UC, or bring them home.
Funny that this should be buried quite a ways into the story. You can't build a $37 million plant overnight.
I suspect the tax leeches are worried that their opportunity to extort some bucks from this company may be ending soon.
Man, I despise environmental cops. The worst of the worst...
Seems to be organic waste, may stink, won't hurt you.
Wow. That's a lotta cheese. 365,000,000 lbs. a year? I find this hard to believe.
FMCDH(BITS)
Complaints about the discharged whey from cheese factories resulted in the closing of literally thousands of small cheese factories in Wisconsin since about 1950, and the consolidation of manufacture into a few major locations. There used to be a cheese factory on practically every four corners of the roads that were laid out on a checkerboard pattern over much of the state, and they took in the production of the local farmers around, each of whom had small herds of 10 to 40 cows, and market the cheese through co-ops, selling to Kraft, Grande, Sargento and other cheese warehousing brokers. By repeated increases in legal standards in the quality of water, it became economically infeasible to maintain these small local factories, and the entire production and marketing structure was transformed into huge industrial complexes, almost entirely integrated into a farm-to-mass market operation.
I guess the fishing is better than it used to be in those little country creeks.
A red county in a blue state.
FMCDH(BITS)
Now that is probably one of the most biased, one-sided bits of reporting you will ever read.
Several graphs of accusation against the company before any quote by a company official or information that the company is now spending $37 million for a waste treatment facility.
On the government connections that apparently helped the company get off easy, here is what we get.
"The company was among the first of Gov. Gray Davis' major donors to switch to Arnold Schwarzenegger during the 2003 recall campaign, giving the Republican $21,200 - the maximum that corporations can give directly to gubernatorial candidates."
Just how much and for how long this company donated to Gray Davis is not revealed. I suppose we are supposed to blame Schwarzenegger for this.
Beyond this, this article completely misses the issues involved. It details nothing about whether the regulations are overly stringent or reasonable. It tells us nothing of how the regulations that were supposed be imposed on the cheese factory compare to regulations other states impose on the same industry.
The later would certainly seem to be a salient point considering the effort to keep jobs in California and the number of businesses that have left California because of overly stringent environment regulations.
You only miss the issue of environmental regulation of business in California in a story like this if you are uninformed on this issue or are purposely choosing to ignore these very salient points in today's political and issues discourse.
How can a story like this omit mention of the number of people employed by this company and what that employment means to the local and state economy?
If the company is indeed a gross polluter, then they need to clean up. State regulators and those politicians that allegedly took campaign bribes to look the other way as the article implies also need to be exposed. And not just those that have been in office for the last several months of a multi-year problem (Geez).
There is much more to this story. What we got was someone either bent on an agenda or so uninformed on the issues they are not capable of presenting other than a one-sided, incomplete and thus inaccurate story.
Best Regards,
Russell Betts
I was defense counsel in a cattle-rustling trial in that county (Merced). My first published opinion was a dairy case - Dutch and Portugese dairyman don't get along. The ethnic rivalries, and multi-ethnic marriages, out here are wonderful.
All that and the planet didn't crack in two, nobody died, and millions of dollars were saved. Why is it every nonmilitary war we declare ends up being just a war on the unconnected?
They want to run the cheese factory out an put in "smart growth" high density government private apartment complexes for the unemployed workers to live in. Its what California with our "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" governor does best.
BTTT!!!!!!
Kinda gives "Rural Cleansing" an additional meaning according the the "MetroSexual" Sacratomato BEE, doesn't it?
Uhhhmm..
I may have to finally write the penultimate environmental schwarzenovella .. to be displayed prominently on GReenos coffee tables when they are having their flavored water and kookies..
Umm , maybe call it.. A Brie Too Far.. whatdaya think? ;-)
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