Portal:Toxic Sludge/San Francisco's "Organic Compost"

Chez Sludge: How The Sewage Sludge Industry Bedded Alice Waters. As reported by author John Stauber, "The celebrity chef Alice Waters is probably the world's most famous advocate of growing and eating local, Organic food.  In February 2010 her Chez Panisse Foundation chose as its new Executive Director the wealthy "green socialite" and liberal political activist  Francesca Vietor. Vietor's hiring created a serious conflict of interest that has married Waters and her Foundation to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and its scam of disposing of toxic sewage sludge waste as free "organic Biosolids compost" for gardens." (Later in 2010, the Chez Panisse Foundation quietly changed Executive Directors; Vietor has since taken the lead of the SFPUC.)

BACKGROUND: San Francisco Bay celebrity chef Alice Waters would probably never dump sewage sludge onto her own garden, nor serve food grown in biosolids sludge in her world famous natural foods restaurant Chez Panisse. The stated mission of her Chez Panisse Foundation is to create "edible schoolyards" where kids grow, prepare, and eat food from their own organic gardens. But when Francesca Vietor was hired in February 2010 as the new executive director of the Chez Panisse Foundation she was also the Vice-President of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The (SFPUC) was running a scam of disposing of sewage sludge waste as free "organic Biosolids compost" for school and home gardens. Thanks to an "open records" investigation by the Food Rights Network, the public and the press have easy online access to scores of internal SFPUC files, documenting the strange tale of Chez Sludge: How the Sewage Sludge Industry Bedded Alice Waters.

The SFPUC had been deceptively bagging toxic sewage sludge as 'organic compost' and giving it away to unsuspecting gardeners, people to whom the word 'organic' connotes the highest level of pure, toxin-free food production.

On March 4, 2010, the Organic Consumers Association and dozens of San Francisco community groups protested at the mayor's office causing the city to put its sludge "compost" giveaway on the shelf, where it sits today -- a major victory for OCA and the Food Rights Network.