11 wastewater treatment plants in LA County produce half a million tons of treated sewage sludge from human waste per year. Sludge is sent to a lnadfill in Kern County, the Westlake Facility, and some to Arizona
water pollution from sewage sludge
air pollution from sewage sludge and from trucks hauling the sludge to the farm - 55 trucks per day/20,000 per year at full capacity
LA County: "It's an important investment in long-term, reliable infrastructure that is critical to our ability to provide vital wastewater treatment services"
Westlake Farms: receiving less than they bargained for
Local farmers: it's a way to dispose of green waste (like wood chips)
Environmental groups and residents: concerned about air and water pollution, sued the project but settled after LA agreed to use clean-fuel trucks to haul waste. “It seemed like another deal where the Central Valley gets shafted by Southern California,” she said. “We send them good water to drink, and they send us back their poo. … I can’t say I’ll be really upset if they’re not operating at 100%.”
LA County: bought 14,500 acres of a farm for $27.4 million, used 2,500 acres to construct the $130 million composting plant, leased the remaining land back to the farm. The plant processes less than a 10th of what it was supposed to process, providing the farm with much less fertilizer than they expected.
Westlake Farms: sold the land to LA County, sued to have the sale undone after the plant produced much less fertilizer than expecte
Kings County and other nearby counties: banned application of biosolids (human waste) directly onto land, forcing LA to build a composting plant
Industrial meatpacking plants in countries all over the world (USA, Germany, Australia) have all become hotspots of COVID-19 (Link).
The close proximity in which workers working in such plants, the gruelling hours, the lack of access to healthcare among workers (many of whom are immigrants, refugees and POCs), are all reasons why such plants have emerged as hotspots. This Propublica article talks about the amont of preparation that such an industry has for pandemic flu outbreaks that could wipe out animals, but failed to do the same for their workers (Link). Moreover, our desire of meat (bad for the environment and unsustainable), has resulted in these companies having a tremendous amount of clout which allowed some to go over the heads of local officials as the ProPublica article reports.
A well publicised Harvard study reported an association between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and COVID-19 deaths (Link). Another recent study that consider multiple pollutants found a signficiant association between nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a traffic-related pollutant and COVID-19 deaths, and not PM2.5 (Link).
Air pollution and COVID-19 have intersected in other ways. The decreases in air pollution due to the lockdown were seen as one of the few silver linings of the crisis (Link). Although early optimism has been dashed as air pollution levels have jumped right back up in China (Link) and other places when the lockdown was lifted. Some may say that under the cover of COVID-19, the Trump administration also rolled back several environmental regulations (Link), and it is unclear yet what the long-term effects of such rollbacks will be.
Air pollution is also a carrier of COVID-19 (Link), and researchers have been investigating the transmission of the virus by simulating mundane activities such as speaking in the elevator and even flushing a toilet.
Some of the other ways however, in which air pollution and COVID-19 will intersect are at infrastructure such as warehouses, which we will see increase as more and more people move to shopping online. Already in the recent pasts of the building of massive warehouses have been challenged for environmental justice reasons, as they tend to be built in poor, minority communities and result in heavy freight traffic, which in turn burdens such communities with increased pollution (Link1, Link2). Amazon employees themselves have documented the nature of siting of warehouses (Link), and it is likely to become an even more fraught site of contention as we move forward.