Talking Trash, or Sludge

San Joaquin Valley Senator Dean Florez questioned Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's "green credentials" Tuesday, arguing that the mayor isn't being so environmentally friendly by sending L.A.'s treated human waste to a farm in Kern County.

His comments come after a judge overturned a Kern ballot measure that banned the import of L.A.'s sewage sludge. An ambitious fellow Democrat, Florez led the ban-the-biosolids campaign, which portrayed L.A. leaders as "sludge peddlers" dumping their unwanted waste in rural Kern County.

But Villaraigosa and other officials have argued that the city's sludge is safe and that using it to fertilize farmland is the environmentally-friendly way to deal with it. And he expressed hope this week that the two counties can work together on the sludge.