I should have added... the rice farmers, instead of paying the pittance it takes to rejoin the stubble to earth, take the alternative route of burning the stubble and filtering the smoke through the healthcare and funeral delivery systems, spreading the costs across all the citizenry while reaping what little there is to gain for themselves alone.
Dan
On May 17, 2005, at 10:41 AM, Dan Scanlan wrote:
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
"I uke, therefore I am." --Cool Hand Uke http://www.coolhanduke.com
