Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Neighbors Oppose Plans for Composting Facility Near Homes : Environment: Remains of human and industrial waste would be used. Concern is voiced over water quality and what might be dispersed during windstorms.

“It stinks like hell.”

That’s the bottom line for Antelope Acres resident Domenico Arcuri, who, along with many of his neighbors, opposes a plan by a Maryland company to turn the treated remains of human and industrial waste into compost at an outdoor facility near their homes.

“I’ve lived here for 27 years and it’s just terrible. It’s sickening,” Arcuri said. “It’s just something we can’t take.”

The smell isn’t the only--or primary--concern of residents, who also fear the effects the sludge could have on the area’s ground water and what might blow off the compost piles during the high desert’s notorious windstorms.

“There are too many unanswered questions,” said Virginia Stout, a resident of rural Antelope Acres, the community closest to the proposed composting facility.

Some Antelope Valley residents, most of whom live in the remote community of Antelope Acres, are planning to appear before the county Board of Supervisors on Thursday to fight the composting proposal by Bio Gro Systems Inc.

The Regional Planning Commission in December granted the conditional use permit that Bio Gro needs to build the composting facility. That approval, however, was appealed by the Antelope Acres Town Council, an elected body that has no legal authority. The supervisors will decide whether to uphold the Planning Commission’s approval.

“This isn’t something that’s very compatible and in the best interest of our people,” said Judy Fuentes, town council secretary.

Bio Gro wants to use 67 acres of its 640-acre ranch in the western Antelope Valley for the composting facility. As much as 500 tons per day of sludge from waste treatment plants in the city of Los Angeles would be trucked to the ranch, located near the Kern County border off Avenue A and 140th Street West.

The sludge, which Bio Gro refers to as “biosolids,” would be mixed with green waste such as sawdust, yard clippings and almond hulls to begin the process that will result in soil-enriching compost for home gardens and farms, said Bio Gro representative Linda Novick.

Sludge is not a new import to the Antelope Valley. Since late 1990, Bio Gro has been hauling Los Angeles sludge to its ranch, where it injects the pungent material into the ground, or spreads it on the surface then churns it into the earth, on land that is later planted with alfalfa and barley.

The permit approved in 1990 by the state Regional Water Quality Control Board for the sludge operation already under way allows up to 100 tons a day of the waste to be dumped at the ranch several miles west of Lancaster.

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Novick said the sludge is brought to Bio Gro’s ranch only a few months a year, before the planting season.

The composting facility, however, will be a year-round operation.

“Families living right across from the facility are already suffering from the odors,” said local environmentalist Stormy Williams.

The composting facility was approved by the state water board in March, 1993. In addition to the conditional use permit from the county, the facility also needs approval from the state Integrated Waste Management Board.

Residents fear the area’s high winds, which exceed 60 m.p.h. at times, will blow material off the ranch and into their homes.

“To start a big sludge facility above the ground in this area is just awful,” Williams said. “I don’t care how damp it is. It’s going to move when we have winds.”

Novick said Bio Gro is aware of the area’s winds and has designed its composting facility around them.

Opponents cited the $50-million, fully enclosed composting plant recently opened by the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District as an example of what should be done in the windy Antelope Valley. But that indoor plant, Novick said, has far less capacity than Bio Gro’s proposed outdoor facility.

Any pathogens in the sludge and green waste, she said, will be killed during the composting process, when the materials reach temperatures of 130 to 160 degrees.

Residents are also concerned about possible contamination of ground water from the composting. In Antelope Acres, the 1,000 or so residents rely exclusively on ground water for their drinking, cooking and landscaping needs, said Richard McLemore, town council president.

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Farmers in the area said 100-pound bags of onions have floated across the Bio Gro property in past winters when heavy rains caused severe flooding.

“We think our facility is not going to have any effect on water quality at all,” Novick said. The composting will be done on a 30-acre paved area that will be next to a seven-acre, lined pond that will collect any runoff water. In addition, ground water monitoring wells will be installed.

The reassurances from Bio Gro have done little, if anything, to relieve the concerns of residents.

“There’s other ways to deal with sludge other than in this way in this place,” Stout said.