Sludge Watch ==> Senator calls on LA mayor to live up to green claims - stop dumping sludge

[Maureen Reilly]

For Immediate Release: April 9, 2007
Contact: Jennifer Hanson, 916-651-4016



SACRAMENTO -- Senator Dean Florez today called upon Los Angeles Mayor 
Antonio Villaraigosa to live up to his reputation as a steward for 
environmental justice and end his city’s lawsuit, which seeks to continue 
dumping treated human waste on Kern County fields.  Florez issued the 
following letter to Villaraigosa today, in response to an article in 
Friday’s Los Angeles Times, “L.A. to turn sludge from treated wastewater 
into energy.”  In the article, Los Angeles city officials acknowledge the 
emissions created by trucking the waste and by the sludge itself, in 
addition to laying out an environmentally conscious alternative disposal 
method:



April 9, 2007



The Honorable Antonio Villaraigosa
Mayor, City of Los Angeles
200 North Spring Street, Room 303
Los Angeles, California  90012


Dear Mr. Villaraigosa:



I was encouraged to read late last week about the L.A. Sanitation District’s 
plan to inject sewage sludge into depleted oil and gas reservoirs deep 
underground.  This will greatly reduce the amount of treated human waste 
currently being trucked north and applied to land above the sensitive 
groundwater table in Kern County against the stated wishes of community 
residents.


Friday’s article in the Los Angeles Times may paint too rosy a picture when 
it refers to sewage sludge as “spongy organic material left over from 
treated wastewater,” but it is right on the mark when it notes the impact on 
truck traffic and the emissions created by those trucks and by the sewage 
sludge itself.


Based on L.A. officials’ public recognition of the fact that it is costly 
both in dollars and to the environment to truck this treated human waste to 
Kern County to spread on local fields each day, I would hope you would back 
up those convictions by ending your lawsuit which seeks to continue the 
practice.


I have always believed that there should be local solutions to waste 
disposal, rather than an effort to dump on a neighboring community without 
the means to prevent it.  While a reduction in land application of sludge is 
a good first step, it is not what the people of Kern County voted for, need 
or deserve.  Moreover, this plan dispels the argument made by Los Angeles in 
its lawsuit that there are no alternatives for disposal of sludge.


As an often-recognized leader in the environmental community and an advocate 
for environmental justice, I hope at some point to see recognition on your 
part that that is what is at stake here.

One in six Valley children already carries an inhaler due to illnesses 
brought on by poor air quality.  When you continue to use the power of your 
expensive attorneys to force your treated human waste on Kern County, you 
are dealing another blow to our hard-fought efforts to clean the air.  The 
cost of the protracted legal battle to protect our vital resources also cuts 
into the services we are able to provide to a community afflicted by high 
levels of poverty.


What I read about Friday is only a half-measure, albeit one that promises 
more hope than your previously entrenched position that you had no 
alternatives available.  I am asking you to be a good and responsible 
neighbor to the people of Kern County.  I look forward to the day you have 
ended your lawsuit and we can stand together to embrace alternatives that 
will end the abuse of Kern County’s air and land.



Sincerely,



DEAN FLOREZ
Senator, Sixteenth District


CC:      Bernard Barmann, Sr.
             Kern County Counsel
        Stephen R. Maguin
            Chief Engineer & General Manager, Los Angeles Sanitation 
District
        Kern County Board of Supervisors
            Kern County Water Agency
        General Public