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BAKERSFIELD -- Los Angeles is challenging a recently passed law in Kern County that will halt the city from dumping virtually all of its treated human waste on farm fields near Bakersfield.
The city filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday calling the ban on sewage sludge "arbitrary and irrational." The lawsuit also contends that it is forcing the city to seek alternative ways to dispose the sludge "at a cost of millions of dollars and great environmental harm."
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Other plaintiffs named in the lawsuit include two Southern California sanitation districts, farmers who spread the biosolids on their land to grow crops for livestock, and businesses that transport the sludge.
The ban was overwhelmingly approved in June by Kern County voters who were convinced the unsavory mixture fouls the air and endangers the quality of groundwater. The ban takes effect at the end of the year.
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.
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 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.
A Democratic lawmaker who supported the ban suggested the lawsuit exposes the hypocrisy among Los Angeles city leaders, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who tout the city's conservation efforts.
"He has a huge amount of credibility on the line with us," said state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter. "In his State of the City address, he said that Los Angeles would be the greenest, cleanest city in America. Is he going to do that at the expense of Kern County?"
Florez said he hopes to meet with Villaraigosa next week to convince him that the city has other alternatives. Florez pointed out that a facility to open in Rialto, east of Los Angeles, in 2008 would convert sewage sludge into a fuel that can be used by power plants.
Southern California sewage districts trucked about 470,000 tons of sewage sludge to Kern County last year.
Copyright 2006 by TurnTo23.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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