Battle Lines Form Over Dumping Sludge : Antelope Valley: Officials say they weren’t told of a proposal to fertilize fields with treated sewage.

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich said Tuesday he will oppose a plan by the city of Los Angeles to spread hundreds of tons of sewage sludge over farms in the Antelope Valley, a proposal that also drew complaints from officials of Palmdale and Lancaster and angered local environmentalists.

“It is time the city of Los Angeles and its elected officials recognize they cannot use the Antelope Valley as a dumping ground for their garbage,” said Antonovich, who represents the area. The supervisor said he would change his mind only if the plan were to draw “substantial community support.”

That seemed an unlikely prospect Tuesday. In response to a Times article disclosing the plan, Antelope Valley environmental activists also vowed to resist it. And city officials in Lancaster and Palmdale complained that they had not been told of it and doubted that it would be approved by state officials.

The Times reported Tuesday that the city of Los Angeles, through a private firm, had applied for state permission to truck up to 300 tons of sewage sludge a day--more than 20% of the city’s output--to be used as fertilizer on 3,500 acres at five farms in the Antelope Valley.

The state Regional Water Quality Control Board, meeting last Thursday in Death Valley, had been set to approve the proposal. But a decision was delayed for two months after some board members complained that the sludge could contaminate the high desert’s ground-water supply.

Officials of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and leaders of national environmental groups said Tuesday that government agencies across the country are increasingly looking to direct land application of sewage sludge as an option as landfill space becomes scarce.

“It’s an issue that’s exploding all across the country. We’re seeing hundreds and hundreds of these things coming out of the woodwork all over the country,” said Douglas Rader, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, a private, pro-environment group.

Rader and EPA officials said using sludge as a fertilizer can be beneficial and is preferable to dumping the mud-like substance in the ocean or landfills, as many cities still do. But they added that the treated sewage can contaminate ground water and pose a health hazard if not properly regulated.

However, some environmentalists and city officials in the Antelope Valley, the fastest-growing region of Los Angeles County, saw the issue in much simpler terms--as yet another case of people from “down below” in Los Angeles trying to dump their problems somewhere else.

“This is the typical mentality about the high desert,” said Lancaster Mayor Lynn Harrison, who said her city’s government had no idea of the Los Angeles plan before Tuesday. She said city dwellers are “always quick to get rid of what they don’t want up here” because they believe that “nobody lives there--it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m sure it’s not going to go over very well with the community,” added Palmdale City Administrator Bob Toone, who also said his city knew nothing of the proposal previously. Toone said he thought it ought to require approval by county planners.

Dick Frazier, a supervising regional planner for the county, said he sees nothing in the proposal that would require county approval.

“We were just horrified. We are totally against this,” said Stormy Williams, a Rosamond resident who heads an Antelope Valley environmental group, Desert Citizens Against Pollution. “They are not going to get anywhere on this. Everyone in the valley will unite on this,” she said.

Los Angeles officials, who are backing the plan with a private company, Bio Gro Systems, insisted that the sludge program is environmentally safe and actually recycles what has been a waste product. The city trucks 950 tons of sludge a day to farms in Riverside County and Yuma, Ariz., but wants to divert about a third of that to the closer Antelope Valley to save money on trucking costs.

Los Angeles and Bio Gro officials said they can understand the concern over the proposal. “Because of the public perception of sludge, we are fortunate to be regulated enough that we can be confident it is a good program,” said Carol Pavon, Bio Gro’s monitoring manager.

She acknowledged that Bio Gro, although it has been pursuing the Antelope Valley proposal for nearly a year, until now had not discussed the plans with the public or city officials in Lancaster and Palmdale. But now, she said, “If they are interested in it, we’re certainly willing to talk.”