10-Year Free Ride For Massively Polluting CA Cheese Factory - SacBee

[hatrack]

HILMAR, Merced County - For more than a decade, California water-quality enforcers have given the world's largest cheese factory a free ride, sparing the politically connected company millions of dollars in required sewage treatment and allowing it to foul local water supplies and the air of nearby neighborhoods. Every day, Hilmar Cheese Co. makes a million pounds of cheddar, Colby, mozzarella and Monterey Jack at its sprawling factory south of Turlock and dumps an average 700,000 gallons of putrid waste onto nearby land leased from company owners and supplying dairies.

And virtually every day for the past 16 years, state records show, the wastewater's volume and salinity have far exceeded limits imposed by the state's Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board to keep the groundwater drinkable for neighbors. The water board has recorded at least 4,000 violations against Hilmar Cheese in the past four years alone, making it one of California's most chronic offenders of clean-water laws.

Yet, for years not a single fine or injunction was issued. Instead of cracking down, the Valley water board kept raising the limit on wastewater volume at the cheese maker's request, as production kept growing. Board records show regulators agreed to increases four times in eight years - 1990 through 1997 - each time counting on company promises to cut pollution. Often the fixes did not follow. Sometimes they flopped. "This is a clear case of environmental injustice," said Rafael Maestu, who last year reviewed the state's file on Hilmar Cheese as an inspector for California's nine regional water boards. "Basically, they are above the law," Maestu said.

Only after The Bee spent three months investigating the plant's pollution did the water board take its first enforcement action, on Dec. 2."

EDIT

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/11744121p-12630244c.html

[Xithras]

1. The rest of the story...

If you've never been to Hilmar, it's one of those "blink and you'll miss it" kind of small towns populated mainly by farmers and freeper-types. The tiny town resides in the heart of conservative California, and the Hilmar Cheese Co. is the towns only major employer. This portion of the California Central Valley was COVERED in dairy processors twenty years ago and they were at one time central to the regions economy, but changes in the global agriculture market and "superdairy" competition from other areas of the US have reduced the dairy industries influence over the area. Many people in Hilmar, the surrounding farmlands, and the state government fear that overburdening the Hilmar Cheese Co. with environmental regulations will drive them out, effectively unemploying an entire town and destroying the last of a local agricultural tradition.

So what changed? Urban sprawl. Urban sprawl reached tiny Hilmar in 1998 as people began trying to escape the Bay Area for a quieter, more rural lifestyle. Within a span of a few years several large subdivisions have sprung up around the town and its population has swelled from 1200 or so to more than 3000. These new residents are primarily commuters and don't care about the towns economy, and they CAN'T STAND the smell of the cheese plant (even without the waste dumping, cheesemaking is a smelly process). These people wasted no time in taking their complaints to the state and are now taking the lead in forcing the Hilmar Cheese Company to clean up its act.

[hatrack]

2. Interesting, Xithras

Thanks for filling in the blanks! :hi:

[Xithras]

3. My uncle used to own a farm near Hilmar.

He sold it to developers a few years ago, but I've been in the town more times than I care to admit. Hilmar, for the most part, is a tiny little one-stoplight town where the entire social fabric revolves around their churches. The area is EXTREMELY right wing (George Bush held a $500 per plate fundraiser here in 2000 as a guest of the ag owners), and I was verbally assaulted more than once for having an Al Gore For President sticker on my car. There is a HUGE division in the town today between the newcomers, who are mostly from more tolerant and less religious areas, and the older families who have no problem attacking those who disagree with their "christian values".

Whether it will stay that way is another story altogether. When my uncle sold his place a few years back the median value of a home in Hilmar was $60,000 to $80,000. Today it's about $250,000 and climbing thanks to the development. The older population is being chased out of Hilmar and the other small towns in this area by these climbing land values...their kids can no longer afford to buy around here, and whole families are moving out of state as a result. I give it another 10 years and all of these tiny freeperholds will be as blue as the rest of the state.