Attention Southern Californians
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Posted on 07/15/2012 9:29:51 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Southern California soon will begin sending sewage sludge into western Kings County -- up to 500,000 tons a year to a piece of farmland the size of Clovis.
It's the San Joaquin Valley's newest mega-composting project, mixing treated human waste from 5.7 million people and woody debris from area farming.
The compost will be used as soil nutrient on scrubby land at Westlake Farms to help grow cotton, wheat, pomegranates, pistachios and other crops.
But make no mistake about this enterprise. The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County -- serving 78 cities, including Long Beach and Beverly Hills -- bought 14,500 acres of farmland so there would be a place to send these pungent truckloads.
The first sludge, or biosolids, probably will arrive late next summer, the sanitation agency says.
The project's yuck factor lit up the Valley's west side 10 years ago when the L.A. districts bought the land. Distaste lingers today among environmentalists and residents of nearby Kettleman City.
But the $120 million project has survived appeals of its county operating permit, a lawsuit over air quality and continuous scrutiny.
(Excerpt) Read more at fresnobee.com ...
Grow food in poop. Not the best idea we’ve had.
Besides the possibility of pathogens and prions, what about drug residues?
I've got to disagree there. Notwithstanding your questions, it's just about the best idea California has come up with in decades.
I’d be more concerned with heavy metals. BTW, I’m not talking music.
MILDRED: Oh Jake, it’s just your imagination.
JAKE: No it’s not Mildred. I’m telling ya; this water melon taste like sh*t.
There’s a Governor Brown joke in there somewhere.....
From Wikipedia: All known prion diseases affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue and all are currently untreatable and universally fatal.[4]
...
This structural stability means that prions are resistant to denaturation by chemical and physical agents, making disposal and containment of these particles difficult.
Oh, yeah. Miss-folded protiens that only affect humans have to come from humans... So lets put humans in the food chain... Not a good idea.
There is that, I suppose.
Please ping me with any Southern California related articles. Thank you!
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Well... we've got to do something with it, and it is an excellent fertilizer. Plants grow best around the septic lagoon.
Besides the possibility of pathogens and prions, what about drug residues?
Well... you should wash any plant food before eating it.
I presume that if the human waste is turned to ash, there won’t be too many mis-folded proteins to worry about.
Vietnamese would have to disagree. The smell smacks you in the face as soon as you step off the plane. Hey, ain't no Porta-Potties out in the paddies, just roll up the pant leg, squat down and let her rip......
I suppose their generations have built up some sort of immunity to whatever gets passed along.
much of Talapia fish is raised this way.
2 to 3 weeks before harvest they are moved to a pure water containment to cleanse their system of any toxins.
Delish, huh?
Think about that next time we have fish tacos.
LOLOLOLOL
True story.
The fish are arctic cod, I checked....
LMAO...
That would be my concern as well. Lots of instances of urban sewage containing heavy metals.
How about giving Cali growers water to grow stuff.
With this news we’re better off with a roll of the dice buying food grown in Mexi-China.
Germany has been doing this for decades, if not centuries - growing food for human consumption using human waste-based fertilisers.
That said, if I did know it, I would not purchase / consume food grown in such media. The danger posed by medicine residues, etc. is very, very real.
Do they get all the medical and doper’s drug residue as an added bonus?
Who gives a crap? They’re just Californians. Not to be missed.
Good point but let us expend on that. We now have genetically altered beef and many other altered products out on the market. What is to say that the fecal matter of these animals too is not effecting the food that is grow in that? We all know animals are pumped full of steroids and pass it out in the end and that worries me. What concerns me more is reading the label on lets say a can of green beans. I am amazed that they get more than two or three beans in the can with all that other crap in there.
been force feeding their citizens their own poop for years?
The article further describes some aspects of the sludge treatment, but doesn’t clarify the parameters of the sludge being disposed in the agricultural sector. The purchase of the land doesn’t encourage less reporting, but probably should mandate closer scrutiny of their operating procedures.
Sludge is a byproduct of wastewater treatment, which ranges from heavy effluent after initial screening and clarification, to product which has been fully deoxidized, burnt, and void of bacteria. It is a part of the wastewater treatment process, not necessarily identifiable as sewage.
Most people associate sludge being used on agriculture with spreading manure on farmland. It isn’t the same. In many cases (most cases) sludge being disposed off site from wastewater treatment processes is not septic, nor has any odor. It likely is finer in particle size, less dense, and may be more prone to increasing dust in the air, if not adequately suppressed while handling the media.
We’ve been using it to fertilize animal feed crops around here for years.
That’s what I was thinking.
First porn films and now this.
Los Angeles....volcano of filth.
Much safer, IMHO.
Agreed. There was a lot of processing before humans ate the meat or drank the milk. It was more than 20 years ago but it seems that we were only allowed to put it on hay fields then.
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