SHAFTER, Calif. — The heat of another Central Valley workday bounces off the pickup hood as Edd Palla rolls past his sprouting farm fields. Over there is alfalfa. Up a bit stand the sugar beets.
And just down the road is the tail end of the Los Angeles sewer system.
Each day, more than 50 big-rig trucks from metropolitan sewer plants rattle into Kern County loaded with sludge, the goopy final product of urban waste water. One billion pounds is spread annually on the county's cropland, making Kern the state's No. 1 destination for sludge.
That distinction rankles Palla and other residents at the southern edge of California's bountiful farm belt. They feel dumped on by that big, noisy megalopolis just over the Grapevine. As Palla puts it: "We don't want to be L.A.'s toilet."
Those are fighting words, and an epic battle is raging in Kern County over sludge.
When the rural county adopted a plan in October to restrict sludge imports, Los Angeles and a powerful pack of Southern California sewage agencies reared up and sued. The sewer folks, dubbed the "sludge six" by Kern wags, worried that disposal costs would soar if they couldn't ship sludge here.
Los Angeles city officials have been particularly aggressive, whipping out their checkbook to spend $9.6 million this year on a swath of Kern farmland to preserve a home for the city's sludge.
There also has been a countersuit by Kern, a rash of legislative wrangling in Sacramento and plenty of rhetorical bombast in this most classic of California feuds, a battle of rural against urban, Central Valley versus Lotus Land.
In Kern County, people are casting themselves as David against the Los Angeles Goliath.
Many fear crop sales in the nation's fourth most prosperous agriculture county could be hurt if Kern gets saddled with a reputation as sludge central. Sludge foes also worry about possible health risks and say the handful of farmers who accept the stuff--seeing it as a cheap way to fertilize flagging cropland--have sold their souls to the sewage agencies.
"The experts can't agree whether it's safe or unsafe," said Gail Ulrich, whose homestead in eastern Kern County is near a sludge site. "Why should we be the guinea pigs?"
Power of Farming Lobby
Such talk irks officials in Los Angeles and Orange County, who say sludge has been battle-tested around the world and proved safe.
