On May 17, 2005, at 10:31 AM, Michael Perelman wrote:
It is much better than burning the rice stubble, which pollutes the air in N. California.
I've often wondered if the rice field smoke we get in the Sierra foothills from the Sacramento Valley isn't some kind of cosmic cross-generational blowback from gold miners flooding the valley with their hydraulic slurry in the 1800s. Sadly, by the time the smoke gets here to ruin our otherwise starlit evenings, it is commingled with the phlegm of Valley-ites.
Amigo Bob has been trying to get the farmers to plow the stubble back into the soil for years. To no avail. Valley-ites and foothillians should get together and sue the bastards.
Dan Scanlan Grass Valley CA
