L.A. Sues Over Sewage Dumping Ban
Posted on: Wednesday, 16 August 2006, 09:00 CDT
LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles is challenging a new voter-approved ban that will soon block the city from dumping almost all of its treated sewage on rural farm fields near Bakersfield.
The city filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday calling the Kern County ban on sewage sludge "arbitrary and irrational."
The lawsuit also contends the ban is forcing the city to seek alternative ways to dispose of the sludge "at a cost of millions of dollars and great environmental harm." Two Southern California sanitation districts, farmers who spread the biosolids on their land, and businesses that transport the sludge are also listed as plaintiffs.
The treated human waste is trucked to the rural county, dried in massive piles and then spread on land used to grow crops for livestock.
Even though the waste isn't spread on land where food is grown for market, the ban was overwhelmingly approved in June by Kern County voters who were convinced that the unsavory mixture fouls the air and endangers the groundwater in the area, about 115 miles north of Los Angeles. The ban takes effect at the end of the year.
The lawsuit claims the environment in Kern County will be all the poorer without the fertilizer that is spread on the 4,200-acre Green Acres Farm, a disposal site owned by the city of Los Angeles. The city was required to perform a $16 million upgrade of its wastewater processing equipment in order to spread its sludge at Green Acres, but the ban makes that expense pointless, the lawsuit said.
The Environmental Protection Agency decided in the early 1990s that spreading treated sewage waste over farmland was preferable to sending it out to sea or pouring it in landfills. Since then, urban centers have trucked their sewage to rural areas, where the waste primarily is used as fertilizer for animal feed crops.
Some farmers swear by the benefits of the waste, saying it can improve soil quality by turning nutrient-poor ground heavy with clay into arable farmland.
Southern California sewage districts trucked about 470,000 tons of sewage sludge last year to Kern County, one of the nation's most productive farming regions.
Anticipating the ballot measure would pass, Los Angeles officials earlier this year said they had lined up farms in Arizona willing to accept the city's sludge.
Source: Associated Press/AP Online
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