Sludge Watch ==> Salinas Valley Veggies: Dip your lettuce in the toilet bowl?

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Don Maroc has it right.  The overpumping of groundwater in the Salinas 
Valley was so excessive that it has sucked the salty water of the ocean into 
aquifers that are 18 miles or more inland.  When sewage treatment plant 
effluent was used for irrigation, there ihas been no testing of the water 
quality at the point of use at the farm field.

We should not be allowing spray irrigation of leafy greens with water from 
the sewage treatment plant.  The US shouldn't allow it, and Canada shouldn't 
import vegetables that are irrigated this way.

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


Eating local seems to be the safest option

By Don
Maroc

Oct 03 2007

No one would dream of dipping a fresh bunch of lettuce in the toilet bowl 
before making the green salad for dinner, but we don’t seem to mind if 
farmers do that for us.

We get the majority of our salad greens from California, most from Salinas 
Valley in beautiful Monterey County.

The Salinas Valley has experienced explosive population growth. The more 
people, the more water is needed, and California has already pumped much of 
its underground water dry. Ten years ago with a water crisis looming the 
politicians took action.

Salinas turned to the massive amounts of treated sewage water that cost a 
fortune to get rid of and decided to turn it into a moneymaker. They laid 
miles of pipes and delivered treated sewage water to golf courses and 
farmlands for irrigation.

In 10 years they suffered nine E. coli outbreaks. It is interesting that 
last year when there was a huge spinach recall across the U.S. and Canada, 
there was no mention of irrigation water.

Maybe it was cattle living on the ranch? Maybe it was feral pigs or deer? 
Maybe, maybe, maybe anything but the irrigation water. If the irrigation 
water is the culprit then farming is finished in the Salinas Valley, because 
whatever water they have must go for more new development.

During August, Metz Fresh had to recall 8,000 cartons of bagged spinach, 
contaminated with salmonella.

In September, Dole brand issued a continent-wide recall of Hearts Delight 
lettuce salad, packed in plastic bags. Hearts Delight contains three 
varieties of lettuce, Romaine shipped from Colorado and Salinas Valley, 
butter lettuce from Ohio, and greenleaf lettuce from Salinas. It was all 
shipped to a Springfield, Ohio, processing plant to be washed, bagged, and 
distributed.

But washing lettuce and spinach repeatedly, even in chlorinated water, does 
no good if the E. coli and salmonella bacteria are on the inside of the 
leaves. When wastewater irrigation first made its appearance in Salinas, 
they warned people not to walk on grass watered with reclaimed wastewater or 
to eat any fruit or vegetables grown with wastewater irrigation.

Salinas’ sewage water is the supposedly non-toxic residue after all the 
solids (sewage sludge or biosolids) is removed. Just think of the human 
waste, the medicines, cleaners, dyes, spoiled food, drain cleaners, 
cosmetics, pesticides, solvents, that go down your toilet.

And what about hospitals, mortuaries, animal clinics, pet shops, auto 
painting and repair shops, furniture stripping, dry cleaning, metal plating, 
printing shops, etc. There are asbestos, lead, mercury, PCBs, dioxins, and 
hundreds of other man-made chemicals, all absorbed by the roots of our salad 
greens.

Now, our corporate-profit-minded B.C. government has passed the Soil 
Amendment Code of Practice that will allow spreading pulp mill sludge, fly 
ash, domestic and industrial sewage sludge on our farm fields, and local 
government has no control over it.

Why mess with sewage-soaked greens grown in Colorado and California, shipped 
to Ohio to be packaged? Just stop at the Saturday Duncan Farmers’ Market 
or Dan Ferguson’s Dragonfly Farm in Glenora for fresh organic greens.

Buy local, be healthy.

Got a tip or a comment? E-mail me at maroc at islandnet.com.

http://www.cowichannewsleader.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=9&cat=48&id=1076381&more=0