Not in Kern County's Backyard
When life threw Kern County some very unappealing lemons, voters approved a ban on human waste dumping
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Kern County voters made in clear in 2006 -- they're not putting up with any crap from LA and Orange counties.
But LA County and sanitation districts in Orange County want the U.S. Supreme Court to dump the voter-approved ban on transporting processed human waste in Kern County.
The 2006 ballot initiative made it a misdemeanor to dump treated wastes -- aka biosolids -- on unincorporated county land. But both counties continued to shovel the stuff on Kern County because they claimed the ban violates interstate commerce laws.
The city of Los Angeles has been hauling more than 450,000 tons of biosolids a year to a Kern County farming area for use as fertilizer, according to The Associated Press. The treated sewage is left at Green Acres, a 4,700-acre farm LA bought in 1999 for about $15 million.
A federal court had ruled against Kern County, but an appeals court on Tuesday overturned the decision and threw the case back to the lower court.
"At that point," Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Keith Pritsker, told the LA Times, "we said: 'Wait. We want the nation's highest court to determine whether this is a legal form of interstate commerce and therefore beyond the reach of local legislation.' "
Kern County officials said the ban was intended to protect underground water from contamination. Another issue -- the waste is transported in trucks, which produce emissions.
If the ban is upheld, Arizona is next in line. The waste would have to be trucked across California to our lucky neighbors.
