Voters Seek to Block Sludge
Voters in Kern County have moved toward slamming the door on the city of Los Angeles' practice of trucking its treated sewage sludge to farmland it owns in the rural county, forcing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to consider waging an expensive campaign or pony up millions more to truck the stuff to Arizona.
More than 24,000 Kern County voters signed an initiative petition that has qualified a ballot measure to ban Los Angeles and other outsiders from spreading their sludge on farmland in Kern County.
The ballot measure could go before voters in June, unless it is adopted into law by the Kern County Board of Supervisors before then.
"It's a very serious issue," Villaraigosa said Sunday. "We're very concerned that public officials in Kern County would take this action."
Half a dozen sanitation agencies from Los Angeles and Orange counties ship 450,000 tons of treated sewage each year to Kern County, more than half of which -- 273,000 tons -- comes from the city of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles for a decade has shipped 25 truckloads of treated human waste daily to a 4,700-acre farm called Green Acres that it owns south of Bakersfield.
The sludge, also called biosolids, is what is left over after treatment plants clean and remove water from sewage. It is used to fertilize soil for the farming of produce that is then fed to cows and other animals. None of the produce is used for human consumption.
Federal and state environmental laws have stopped cities and counties from dumping the sludge in the ocean and have severely limited the ability to dispose of the waste in local landfills, according to John Collins, a Fountain Valley city councilman and former board chairman for the Orange County Sanitation District.
Three counties -- Sutter, San Joaquin and Stanislaus -- have already banned the import of sludge for spreading on farmland, and nine others have strict rules that make the importation all but impossible.
As a result, the city of Los Angeles and other producers of the sludge have backup plans that call for the biosolids to go to private lands in Arizona if Kern County closes the door.
Kern County leaders say the treated sewage presents a health risk because it contains heavy metals, industrial waste and other toxic substances.
"It contains materials that are harmful to our groundwater and that endanger the residents of our county," said Donald Maben, a member of the Kern County Board of Supervisors.
- Kern County May Bar Southland Sludge Apr 12, 2005
- O.C. Moves to Clean Its Sludge Nov 09, 2001
- Bitter Dispute Sprouts Over Los Angeles' Sewage Sludge May 11, 2000
