Posted on 12/21/2004 3:30:36 PM PST by NormsRevenge
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - The Central Valley's dairy, cotton, fruit and vegetable farms are the newest front in the fight to clean up one of the nation's dirtiest air basins.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District is requiring farmers with more than 100 contiguous acres and dairies with more than 500 cows to submit plans by the end of the year showing what they're doing to reduce the microscopic particles of dust, chemicals or other substances that come from their land.
More than 6,400 farms and dairies in the 270-mile-long valley between San Francisco and Los Angeles meet the requirements to participate in the plan. The farmers can choose from dozens of dust-fighting options. They include measures many already practice, such as watering unpaved roads, switching to organic farming and working at night when winds are lighter.
Environmental activists lauded the new requirements, saying it was about time farmers joined local governments and other industries in controlling dust. But critics said the requirement asks for too little and gives farmers too much room to count measures they already were taking as part of their improvement package.
The requirements are "really just a sham," said Brent Newell, an attorney with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment.
Farmers are turning in plans in which they give themselves credit for actions they might have been taking for decades, he said. That would include growing permanent crops such as almonds and peaches.
Some farmers also have been critical of the program, although for different reasons. They say air regulators are focusing on agriculture because it's an easy target, while the other big source of particulate matter - vehicle emissions - goes unchecked on the local level.
"We have less land in agriculture today than we had 40, 50 years ago, and the pollution is worse," said San Joaquin Farm Bureau program manager Joe Petersen, who farms 50 acres of cherries and wine grapes in San Joaquin County. "That says for me that ag isn't the problem."
Despite the concerns, more than two-thirds of farmers with enough land or cows to fall under the new rules had complied and submitted their two-year plans by early December, said Rick McVaigh, the regional air board's permit services manager.
Health advocates said asking farmers to do their part is an important step in addressing the region's pollution problem. Farms raise 51 percent of the tiny specks of dust that help give the valley one of the nation's highest asthma rates.
Farmer John Pucheu said the requirement has raised farmers' awareness of the need to keep dust down. Like many farmers, however, he said the air among the cotton fields where he lives feels a lot cleaner to him than what he sees when he goes into Fresno, the valley's largest city.
"In these urban areas, you have hundreds of thousands of cars," said Pucheu, who farms 3,500 acres in the west Fresno County town of Tranquillity. "Out here, most days the fields are just sitting there, growing."
The latest cleanup plan proposes reducing particulate pollution by 23 percent, or 34 tons a day, by 2010. To date, the region has missed a series of federal deadlines to reduce pollution - and residents in the area are paying for it with the nation's highest asthma rate.
Medical research has shown that the particles that concern the air regulators and health workers- called PM10 because they are under 10 micrometers, or one-seventh of a human hair in width - can lead to chronic respiratory problems.
According to the American Lung Association, the tiniest particles - those smaller than 2.5 micrometers - can lodge themselves deep inside lung tissue. They have been linked to heart attacks, strokes and a shorter life expectancy.
The particles can consist of diesel exhaust, soot, ash and organic compounds from dairies such as ammonia, in addition to the dust that can rise from fields during harvest or tilling.
"No one likes to get regulated," said Josette Merced Bello, chief executive officer of the American Lung Association of Central California. "Ag is not the only source, and this is not the only solution. But it's important for everyone to get involved."
---
On the Net:
San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District: http://www.valleyair.org/
Darn dusty Farmers ping.
The obvious solution once these regulations metastasize will be to stop farming. California is already seeing a jobs drain and a brain drain. Maybe the farmers will be the next to pack it in. All that will be left is surfers, bums and the homeless. And Arnie thinks the Republican party should move to the left! What a bozo.
My advice to those farmers:
Sell out. Shut down.
Let the stupid sobs starve.
Well, now that you mention it!!!
ISU lab studies ways to reduce the stink of livestock manure
Unreal, isn't it?
I think the farmers should pack up their toys go running home like a bunch of little biatches if they don't get their way. . .
Like any other business that gets tied up in regulations, California farmers may move someplace more business friendly leaving California with no farms to exploit.
No, I wish the CA legislature would cut down their emissions. They are the single most significant source of global warming apart from the UN.
Man, is this guy behind the times. It should be, "Center on Race, Poverty, Justice and the Environment"
Plan A: Shut down and build condos.
Plan B: Join Jesusland and secede from the Blue Marxist states.
"Quick Martha, here come the Cow Flatulence Police. Light a match."
Yes, this is what we need. Stick the farmers with a bunch of expensive conditions to meet and wonder why food prices shoot way up, not to mention production will probably lower and this will bring the prices up even higher. Leave it to the left to completely ruin the US. I don't know why we are worried about the terrorists when we have the left here to bring the country down from within.
We are already importing more than half of our foodstuffs.
Just turn off those windbags Boxer and Pelosi. The dust will settle.
Suppose all these farmers (I have the good luck to traverse 40 miles of this beautiful valley daily) decide to take a one year vacation?
The valley is well... flat. It is windy. It has been dusty since it was created. Might as well suggest we grow food hydroponically.
Followed by......
Environmental activists lauded the new requirements, saying it was about time farmers joined local governments and other industries in controlling dust
Too bad we can't require the environmental activists loonies to take a long walk off of a short pier.
LVM
The farmers are home. The little whiny biatches trying to get their way are the girly men who come up with absurdity.
This is right up there with "safer bullets" and "more sensitive wars"
Won't that also have the benefit of eliminating the main reason for illegal immigration from Mexico? If we get rid of the farms, we'll also get rid of the need for seasonal farm laborers "who do the jobs that Americans refuse to do."
-PJ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.