Well, one of them at least. Potentially. It seems a pretty clear cut case of connecting the dots if you ask me.
One of the first, and lasting, impressions you get of Bakersfield is the smell. It's like nothing you've ever experienced before. People try and blame it on the Ag industry, but my grandparents used to own a farm and it smelled nothing like this. Others blame it on the two days a month the farmers and ranchers are allowed to torch their livestock. But that doesn't explain the other 28 days of the month.
So riddle me this, what could possibly be giving this poor maligned town such a bad odor?
I'm no rocket scientist, but perhaps this has something to do with it...
Back in 2008, they passed an ordinance here banning the importation of sludge. Sludge! It seems that for decades LA has been trucking their sludge up to Kern County and disposing of it. And not just LA, but just about every other county in the state. Kern County finally said "Enough!" and passed the ordinance, which LA promptly fought in court - they don't want their sludge and now what are they going to do with it? This week the case was settled in court and LA lost, so no more sludge for Bakersfield.
What exactly is "sludge"?
TREATED. HUMAN. WASTE.
i.e... shit!
Now, I'm watching this report on the local news and during most of the story they're showing footage of tractors out tilling the fields. It must be a mistake, right? The wrong footage from another story? They can't be implying that that human shit from LA has been dumped on the miles of farm land that ring the city, can they?
Yes they can! And it's no implication, it's the truth!
Every time someone takes a dump in LA, it ends up on the fields of Bakersfield!
"BAKERSFIELD, AMERICA'S TOILET©"
They went to great pains to say that it was never dumped on fields producing food for human consumption. Of course not. I'm sure all the big Ag concerns had crack staff insuring that that never happened. Just the same, I don't know that I'll ever buy bagged lettuce again.
But's that's all in the past now. No more shit for Bakersfield. In theory.
I notice that in all the articles they hedge a bit and say Bako "may" no longer be a sludge dumping ground. Obviously someone is making money off this and they certainly aren't going to give it up without a fight. And already the "sludge isn't all that bad" contrarian Wurlitzer has started.
There will probably be one of Kern County's notoriously corrupt back room deals and nothing will change. But at least for today, there's a hope that we'll all be able to breathe a little easier. Literally.
And if you live in Arizona, consider this a "heads up". Looks like LA has now cast it's gaze east...
