Sludge Watch ==> Kern County Rejects LA Sewage Sludge as Fertilizer

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

I wonder whether the the sludge that arrives at Green Acres has less than 2 
million fecal coliform per gram?  It seems that some of these anaerobically 
digested and centrifuge dewatered sludges have a massive fecal coliform 
reactivation/regrowth problem....
Research from WERF shows ...there is a 10,000 -100,000 -  fold increase of 
detectable fecal coliform bacteria in just 20 minutes after it leaves the 
centrifuge in 4 of 7 of the sludges tested in recently published reasearch.

Why should Kern highways, roads, fields, and field crops  be bombarded with 
Los Angeles' fecal payload'?


See WERF fact sheet:

http://www.werf.us/pdf/ReactivationFactSheet.pdf#search=%22sludge%20pathogen%20reactivation%20fecal%22


..................................................................................................

August 24, 2006

County Rejects LA Sewage As Fertilizer

NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Associated Press Writer

Los Angeles -

Green Acres is a farm where corn stalks grow twice as tall as men and wheat 
sprouts lush and green. It's also, in a sense, an outhouse for about 3.7 
million people.

Every year, Los Angeles trucks about 65 million gallons of sludgy processed 
human waste to be spread as fertilizer on several thousand acres it owns to 
the north in agricultural Kern County. That's enough to fill a toilet about 
the size of an Olympic swimming pool every four days.

Kern County residents voted in June to stop accepting all but a fraction of 
the treated waste, but Los Angeles re-sponded this month with a federal 
lawsuit. The initiative should be thrown out, the metropolis claims, because 
it dis-criminates against the city's "nutrient-rich organic materials."
The legal battle reflects a decades-old problem that has dogged Los Angeles 
and other large cities: What to do with all that waste?

For years, Los Angeles waste flowed from treatment plants into the ocean, 
sparking nasty legal battles with conser-vationists who said it was choking 
the area's marine life.
Finally, in 2000, Los Angeles leaders thought they had found an elegant 
solution: Spread the treated waste over a 4,700-acre farm the city bought 
for nearly $10 million about 15 miles south of Bakersfield.

The waste, which is strictly regulated, helps grow corn, wheat and alfalfa. 
Those crops are fed to cows, and the milk they produce can be sold in 
stores.

Green Acres was hailed as a success story, winning awards from the 
Environmental Protection Agency and others including one for a public 
information video called "Where Does it Go?" The farm's Web site shows 
pictures of red trucks trundling across lush green fields of vegetation.
"We thought we found a responsible solution," said Cynthia M. Ruiz, 
president of the Board of Public Works.

Residents of Kern County, one of the nation's most productive farming 
regions, think the solution stinks.

A group called Keep Kern Clean rallied around the slogan "Send the sludge 
packing!" accompanied by what looks like a dejected slug with a suitcase. A 
more pointed illustration they used is a photo of a two-story outhouse: The 
top door is labeled "L.A. County," the bottom "Kern County."
"We shouldn't allow L.A. to become the greenest and cleanest city in America 
at the expense of our own," said Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, an ardent 
opponent of Los Angeles "sludge peddlers."
Some worry the sludge would pollute groundwater; others are convinced it 
would hurt Kern's economy regardless of its safety.

The waste is not being used on edible crops but "the concern is very real 
that people would not be able to make the distinction," said Barbara 
Patrick, chairman of Kern's Board of Supervisors.
About half the nation's human waste is applied to land, according to the 
EPA. It can be used on crops for human consumption if federal and state 
rules are followed, but the agency says it is used on less than 1 percent of 
U.S. farm-land.

Los Angeles is scrambling to come up with alternatives in case its lawsuit 
fails. Officials say the most promising option would be to inject the waste 
under Terminal Island, a man-made land mass at the ports of Los Angeles and 
Long Beach.

That would give rise to a question Kern County critics used to get their 
initiative passed: If the stuff is so safe, why doesn't Los Angeles use it, 
say for golf courses or lawns?

A small portion of the treated waste is composted at a city park, but Ruiz 
said larger-scale efforts to use it locally failed a while ago.

"We tried to sell compost from some of our green waste, and couldn't find a 
market for it," she said.

On the Net:

LA Biosolids Environmental Management: 
http://www.lacity.org/SAN/biosolidsems/index.htm
Keep Kern Clean: http://www.keepkernclean.com/