Sludge Watch ==> Residents in Kern complain of compost stink and debris

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

This story is interesting for a few reasons:

1. Is Kern County enforcing the Kern bylaws?  Looks like they are not, since 
there are illegal materials stockpiled on this site.

2.  Sewage effluent is being used on this compost...that means that 
antibiotic resistant bacteria, surfactants, hormones, drugs, and chemicals 
from the effluent ends up in the compost that is distributed to almond 
groves, pastures and other farm properties around Kern.

When they see plastic there will be other contaminants...ones that they 
won't see.

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



Residents decry stink, debris with petition
RECYCLING FACILITY
BY STACEY SHEPARD, Californian staff writer

e-mail: sshepard at bakersfield.com | Saturday, Apr 14 2007 8:40 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, Apr 14 2007 8:46 PM

A group of residents in a farming community near Arvin plan to oppose the 
recertification of a private composting facility, saying the company has 
turned Kern County farmland into a dumping ground for waste from Los 
Angeles.

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"It's a bad place," said Randy Parker, who lives about three miles from 
Community Recycling, a greenwaste facility on Bear Mountain Road near 
Wheeler Ridge Road. "It stinks. It brings waste up here from Los Angeles. 
It's not good for Kern County."

Parker and dozens of other residents recently submitted a petition to the 
county office that permits the facility, which opened in 1994. The petition 
says the facility's operations create odors far worse than nearby farms and 
dairies, and has littered the community with plastic bag debris that ends up 
in its compost.

The company and inspectors can't pinpoint the source of the smell. The 
plastic is limited to its composting plant, the company said, and when the 
plastic escapes the plant, the company cleans it up quickly.

Residents hope their petition will cause county officials to take a closer 
look at the facility, which is in the process of having its permit reviewed.

"It's not a composting facility," said Ron Spitzer, a farmer who owns land 
in the area. "It's a dump."

Plastic in the compost?

Community Recycling makes compost from a variety of sources, including 
greenwaste collected in parts of Los Angeles and San Fernando. It also takes 
in produce rejected by grocery stores around the state because it doesn't 
meet standards.

The resulting compost is sold to farmers or spread on the 3,500 acres of 
farmland Community Recycling has acquired nearby over the years. The company 
grows alfafa, wheat, almonds and grapes on the land, said David Baldwin, the 
facility's manager.

Company officials said a lot of the produce arrives at the facility already 
packaged in plastic, like bagged lettuce.

The plastic is mulched along with other organic material but screened out 
before being sold to farmers or applied to the company's own farmland 
nearby, Baldwin said. In at least the past two years, the company has passed 
regular inspections, according to documents at the Kern County Department of 
Environmental Health.

Plastic is only found within the composting facility, Baldwin said. If it 
blows onto nearby property, "we're always the first ones going out to clean 
it up."

But residents insist the compost the company spreads on its fields contains 
small bits of plastic. When the wind blows, they said, the plastic takes 
flight and gets strewn throughout the area.

"It just flies through the air like a herd of butterflies," Parker said.

A question of smell

Baldwin also said the odor claims from residents were unfounded and 
attributed the bad smells to any number of sources in the area, including a 
nearby dairy, farmland and the Lamont Public Utility Wastewater Treatment 
Plant, which treats sewage waste.

When odor complaints have been filed, regulators "have done very thorough 
investigations and they've never been able to attribute the odors to our 
facility," Baldwin said.

Agencies that responded to odor complaints earlier this year did not agree 
on where the smell was coming from.

Officials with the Kern County Environmental Health Department and the San 
Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District said their inspectors couldn't 
determine where the smell was coming from.

The California Regional Water Quality Control Board also responded to 
investigate if the odor was coming from the Lamont Public Utility District 
wastewater facility, which sits at the edge of the greenwaste facility. In 
that report, the investigator wrote that the odor did appear to come from 
the greenwaste facility. However, no action was taken.

Lonnie Wass, a spokesman for the water board, said Community Recycling uses 
treated water from the wastewater plant in its composting operations.

"They may have put more water on their composting than it needed," producing 
the smell, Wass said.

Recertification is now

The Kern County Environmental Health Department is conducting a 
recertification of Community Recycling's permit.

In doing so, an inspector discovered that the company was keeping stockpiles 
of drywall and concrete at the facility, materials the company is not 
permitted to handle. Baldwin said the company plans to seek a conditional 
use permit from the county planning commission so it can process those 
materials. Environmental Health is giving the company time to obtain the 
permit.

The drywall, made from gypsum, will be used as a soil amendment, while the 
concrete would be applied to dirt roads on its farmland to suppress dust, 
Baldwin said. Residents who signed the petition are hoping to stem the 
company's plans to expand its operations any further.

Spitzer, the farmer who own lands near the facility, feels the company is 
operating under the guise of recycling when it's really making a profit by 
disposing of waste from other parts of the state in Kern County. He said 
farmers in the area won't buy the company's compost because of the plastic 
in it. As a result, the company's had to buy farmland in recent years to 
dispose of the compost, he said.

"This is some of the best farmland in the world and they're just coming in 
and dumping on it," Spitzer said.

But Baldwin said the company has plenty of customers. Demand for the compost 
is so high, there's been times when there hasn't been any to spread on their 
own land, he said.

When asked why the company has purchased so much farmland, he responded by 
saying: "Farming's not a crime. Buying a land is not a crime."