Human waste, an unsavory import, raises concern in Central Valley

[Kadie]

Human waste, an unsavory import, raises concern in Central Valley
Tuesday, April 26, 2005

BY JULIANA BARBASSA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

snip...
The mounds are part of an import stream some Kern County farmers would rather not have. Southern California cities and counties truck about 450,000 tons of treated sewage waste each year to the county, where it dries in massive piles and then is spread on land that is used to grow crops for livestock. It is not spread on land that is used to grow foods for market.

Pearson and some other residents say they've had enough of other people's sewage sludge, saying the unsavory mixture fouls the air and endangers the quality of groundwater. Some farmers also fear the practice could hurt the reputation of crops grown on the fertile soils of the southern San Joaquin Valley.

Critics are supporting a bill introduced in the state Legislature to stop the transport of human waste from California's urban counties to the state's farming communities.

"We've become their toilet," said Pearson, a councilman in the rural farming town of Wasco, as he surveyed a 1,280-acre sludge site about 15 miles from town.

snip...
"This is a wealthy, industrial area dumping anything they want on a rural, poor county," said Dean Florez, D-Shafter, who sponsored the bill that would forbid carting waste into Kern County.

more...
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050426/APN/504261140


I had no idea that they did this.

[htuttle]

1. Shit!

I've seen big green trucks spreading crap all over the fields of Wisconsin for decades.

Just recently, in fact, some fool had his fields sprayed while the ground was still frozen, and it ran off into a local stream and caused a big fish kill.

[Xithras]

2. People in LA drink a lot of waste too.

Southern California may pollute the Central Valley, but we get them back in a big way.

Here's a great, big, nasty secret about California water quality: Most of the towns and cities in Northern California, including Sacramento, Stockton, and Modesto, along with dozens of smaller towns, dump their treated sewage wastewater into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries via percolation fields. They frequently violate EPA pollution guidelines, and "accidental spills" of untreated sewage are a regular occurrence (just a few months ago, a leak dumped several hundred thousand gallons of raw sewage into the Tuolumne river near Modesto). And that's not even getting into the pesticide and waste runoff from ag operations and dairies! This water flows into the San Joaquin Delta, where the California Aqueduct picks it up and carts it to Southern California where it's used for everything from drinking and cooking to watering lawns and filling swimming pools.

:puke:

[Kadie]

3. eeewwwww.

Somethings I would just rather not know. LOL I had no idea these things happened. Yuck!