Late Blight Tomatoes

CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE- Tomato plants have been removed from stores in half a dozen states as a destructive and infectious plant disease makes its earliest and most widespread appearance ever in the eastern United States.
Late blight - the same disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s - occurs sporadically in the Northeast, but this year's outbreak is more severe for two reasons: infected plants have been widely distributed by big-box retail stores and rainy weather has hastened the spores' airborne spread.
The disease, which is not harmful to humans, is extremely contagious and experts say it most likely spread on garden center shelves to plants not involved in the initial infection. It also can spread once plants reach their final destination, putting tomato and potato plants in both home gardens and commercial fields at risk.
Meg McGrath, professor of plant pathology at Cornell University, calls late blight "worse than the Bubonic Plague for plants."
"People need to realize this is probably one of the worst diseases we have in the vegetable world," she said. "It's certain death for a tomato plant."
Tomato plants have been removed from Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Lowe's and Kmart stores in all six New England states, plus New York. Late blight also has been identified in all other East Coast states except Georgia, as well as Alabama, West Virginia and Ohio, McGrath said.
It is too early in the season to know whether infected plants will taint large crops or negatively affect commercial growers. But if that happens, growers could be forced to raise prices to cover costs associated with combating the disease.
Agriculture officials in the various states still are trying to determine where the outbreak started. One major grower, Alabama-based Bonnie Plants, supplies most of the tomato plants to big-box stores, but it is unclear whether the plants were infected before or after leaving the supplier's multiple greenhouses.
"There's no way in the world you can pin this on one plant company, but we just happen to be the biggest," said Dennis Thomas, the company's general manager.
The company has regularly inspected greenhouses in 38 states, including Maine, New Hampshire and New York. Its most recent inspections - in New Jersey and Pennsylvania - found no evidence of disease.
"We've not been written up one time for any late blight disease that was confirmed," Thomas said, noting that Bonnie Plants sprays seedlings before shipping them to stores, but that doesn't happen after the plants arrive. He said the company was proactive in removing plants once the outbreak occurred.
In the meantime, plant experts are warning gardeners to be on the lookout for the disease and to take quick action if it crops up. The first sign is often brown spots on plant stems, followed by nickel-sized olive-green or brown spots on the tops of leaves and fuzzy white fungal growth underneath. Tomato fruit will show firm, brown spots.
Spraying with fungicides can control late blight if begun before symptoms appear, but many plant experts recommend removing and destroying the plants instead to prevent spores from traveling.
Donald Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board, said the state's potato farmers are concerned, but not in crisis mode.
"It's pretty easy to make our growers aware of it, that's the simple part. But what we've started to do is really reach out to home gardeners throughout Maine to ask them to be very diligent about checking their tomato plants or potato plants," he said.
Hilary Chapman of Hopkinton, N.H., hasn't yet seen any signs of blight on her four tomato plants - two she planted from seed and two purchased from a small local greenhouse.
"I have one plant that has two tomatoes on it, and everything looks good," she said, "but I'll be watching."
from The Associated Press

Toilet Fee Bum Deal For Greenie

NEW ZEALAND - The owner of a Golden Bay guesthouse has accused the Tasman District Council of "punishing" those who help the environment by charging them twice for their toilet service.
Peter Finlayson, who with his partner Pete Banham runs Autumn Farm in Central Takaka, told councillors at a submissions hearing on its 10-year plan he should be exempt from paying council pan charges.
The couple pay $450 a year on the pan charge, despite using a compost toilet and a grey water disposal system they installed themselves.
Mr Finlayson said he'd already paid resource consent fees for the greywater system and an annual fee of $325 for discharging grey water onto his land, on top of the annual pan charge.
He said it was "ludicrous" they had to pay the charge towards maintaining a sewerage system when their 4.2-hectare property was not connected to it and the system was "anathema to our environmental beliefs".
"We see no reason why TDC should be allowed to levy us costs twice over for the same service. We are penalised because we didn't wish to be a burden on our environment or be part of a mass system."
He also wants his "forced $3000 contribution" to the Central Takaka sewerage system returned as well.
Mr Finlayson said compost toilets, which are becoming more common in the region, recycled human waste into useful fertile soil. He uses his on the vegetable garden and as a mulch for his fruit trees.
The environmental benefits from compost toilets also included saving an enormous amount of water.
"How does the council expect an environmental awareness to develop in the hearts and minds of its constituents when its very own policies punish folk who walk the talk?"
Autumn Farm also has one flush toilet, for which there is a septic tank.
The guest house and campground hosts up to 50 people during five organised summer events.
Mr Finlayson said most guests approved of the concept behind compost toilets, although some opted to use the flush toilet instead.
Council engineering manager Peter Thomson confirmed that pan charges were made to households that could connect to a mains sewerage scheme whether or not they chose to connect to the system.
He said it would be up to councillors to decide whether to change that policy.
Council environmental and planning manager Dennis Bush-King said all compost toilets and grey water systems had to comply with Australian/New Zealand guidelines regarding solid and grey water waste.
from The Nelson Mail

Organic Farms Unknowingly Used A Synthetic Fertilizer

SALINAS, CALIFORNIA - For up to seven years, California Liquid Fertilizer sold what seemed to be an organic farmer's dream, brewed from fish and chicken feathers.
The company's fertilizer was effective, inexpensive and approved by organic regulators. By 2006, it held as much as a third of the market in California.
But a state investigation caught the Salinas-area company spiking its product with ammonium sulfate, a synthetic fertilizer banned from organic farms.
As a result, some of California's 2006 harvest of organic fruits, nuts and vegetables – including crops from giants like Earthbound Farm – wasn't really organic.
According to documents obtained by The Bee through a Public Records Act request, California Department of Food and Agriculture officials were notified of the problem in June 2004 but didn't complete their investigation and order the company to remove its product from the organic market until January 2007.
State officials knew some of California's largest organic farms had been using the fertilizer, the documents show, but they kept their findings confidential until nearly a year and a half after it was removed from the market. No farms lost their organic certification.
The nonprofit California Certified Organic Farmers, which certifies about 80 percent of the state's organic acreage, decided not to penalize farms that had used the product on the grounds that farmers did not know they were using an unapproved chemical.
The state could have pursued harsher penalties against California Liquid Fertilizer, including violation of the California's organic product law, which carries fines of up to $5,000, according to agriculture department spokesman Steve Lyle. It also could have referred the case to the attorney general's office for civil action as an unfair business practice.
"We did not pursue those courses of action because our priority was to remove the product from the market," Lyle said. "More process would have delayed that." The investigation took as long as it did, he said, because the case was complex.
The trouble has continued. In November 2007, the distributor of another organic liquid fertilizer, representing about 5 percent of the market, pulled its product in the middle of another state investigation. Rumors in the industry point to another major disclosure as soon as this month.
Synthetic fertilizers don't present food safety risks, but the organic movement has always opposed them because they take a great deal of energy to produce, decrease natural soil fertility and can pollute water.
Above all, the California Liquid Fertilizer case shows how much the organic regulatory system depends on trust.
Organic Changes
Organic farming started with small operations that rejected modern agriculture's huge, chemical-dependent fields in favor of diversified plots fertilized with old-fashioned compost, manure and cover crops. Today, organic farms still do without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. But much else is radically different.
Sales of organic products have soared from $5 billion nationwide a decade ago to $24 billion today, according to the Organic Trade Association. California accounts for nearly 60 percent of the U.S. harvest of organic produce.
The biggest organic operations now cultivate thousands of acres and sell to mainstream buyers like grocery chains.
With farms under pressure to cut costs and deliver big harvests, demand has grown for a new class of potent liquid fertilizers that help crops thrive.
"Organic agriculture is becoming very dependent on these amendments," said Thaddeus Barsotti, who runs Capay Organic farm in Yolo County. "If you don't use them, and your competitor is using them, you're going to suffer."
Liquid fertilizers work particularly well for cool weather crops like strawberries and salad greens, and market leaders Earthbound and Driscoll's became big customers for California Liquid Fertilizer, according to executives from those companies.
But liquid fertilizers are used on farms producing virtually every variety of organic fruit, nut and vegetable. On his mid-sized farm, Barsotti likes to give his bok choy, cabbage and pepper crops a nitrogen boost early in the growing season, though he said he never used California Liquid Fertilizer's products.
As organic farming has gotten big, it also has struggled to maintain shoppers' trust in the integrity of its products.
Most shoppers interviewed at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op and the Whole Foods Market on Arden Way were a bit cynical about the industry – and they weren't surprised to hear that a major violation of organic standards had slipped through the regulatory system.
"There's a large amount of money to be made as we get more into paying for the quality of our food," said Emmi Felberg of Plymouth.
As a gardener, Felberg knows it's tough to get concentrated nitrogen from true organic sources. She said any farmer ought to be suspicious about fertilizers that seem too good to be true.
"These guys are professionals," she said. "If it looks like a chemical and smells like a chemical, it probably is a chemical."
The Investigation
The state learned of the problems at California Liquid Fertilizer from a whistleblower. In a June 18, 2004, complaint, the former employee alleged that for five years ammonium sulfate had been used in the company's liquid fertilizer.
A year later, according to state records, state Department of Food and Agriculture inspector Pierre Labossiere took the first sample of Biolizer XN, the company's leading product, from Tanimura & Antle Inc., an Earthbound Farm partner in Salinas.
Laboratory analysis supported the allegations, and in July 2005, Labossiere asked California Liquid Fertilizer to explain why, the records show. He never got an answer, and during multiple follow-up visits to the firm's factory near the town of Gonzales was told that the fish and feathers used to make the product were unavailable for sampling.
Over the next year, Labossiere followed up, finding indications of ammonium sulfate in six more samples at farms and fertilizer dealers around the state. In February 2006, he twice intercepted tank cars of ammonium sulfate in a Salinas railyard. Receipts showed the liquid had been shipped to California Liquid Fertilizer from a plant in Decatur, Ill.
California Liquid Fertilizer's then-president, Peter Townsley, did not respond to repeated phone calls from The Bee or to a written request for comment.
Labossiere had caught the fertilizer maker red-handed. But the product remained on the market for nearly six more months before state officials took action.
The state had other things to worry about that fall. In September, an outbreak of a deadly strain of E. coli was traced to Salinas Valley spinach packaged by the parent company of Earthbound Farm. For weeks, national news media scrutinized the government's oversight of the produce industry.
In January 2007, the agriculture department agreed to a settlement with Townsley that removed his product from the market but kept the reasons obscure. The violation was recorded as "improper labeling." In a letter to the Eugene, Ore.-based nonprofit Organic Materials Review Institute, which had approved the product for use on organic farms, Townsley said he was pulling the product because of an inadvertent chemical substitution.
The outcome of the case surprised Dave DeCou, the Oregon institute's executive director. State investigators had contacted him for information about Biolizer.
"I was expecting (the state) to come out with some kind of indictment," he said. "My sense was that they didn't want to have another dirty mark on California agriculture."
Temptation To Fake
Per pound of nitrogen, synthetic fertilizers like ammonium sulfate and urea cost as little as one-twentieth as much as approved organic sources like ground-up fish carcasses.
"If you could take urea and sell it organic, you could make a lot of money," said Jim Coburn, marketing manager for Western Farm Service, a major agrochemical retailer.
Under federal standards, the nitrogen in a fertilizer for organic farming must come from a natural source. But standard laboratory analyses used by organic regulators tell only how much nitrogen is in a fertilizer, not where it came from.
More sophisticated chemical-isotope tests can give an indication – though not definitive proof – of a fertilizer's origins, said Sam Myoda, executive vice president of IEH Laboratories, near Seattle.
Myoda has been hired both by fertilizer makers wanting to prove their product genuine and big growers that want to make sure they aren't being duped. In tests this past year, Myoda said, he has found that a number of fertilizers sold to organic farmers show signs of being from synthetic sources.
Regulating 'Certified Organic'
The U.S. Department of Agriculture decides what materials may be used on an organic farm, and the state agriculture department plays a role in keeping the industry honest – mainly by investigating complaints.
But the review of specific brands of fertilizers, pesticides and so on falls mostly to the Organic Materials Review Institute, which is federally authorized to evaluate organic farming products.
That approval process, though, is based on information submitted by manufacturers. In the case of California Liquid Fertilizer, the fertilizer investigated by the state had been certified by the institute, but the company hadn't been truthful about what it contained, state documents show.
The Organic Materials Review Institute does investigate complaints and now gives special scrutiny to fertilizers, according to spokesman Miguel Guerrero. But each year the organization routinely inspects only about a dozen of the 570 companies whose products it certifies. If it finds a violation, the institute can withdraw certification, but it lacks the authority to pursue stiffer penalties.
The state Department of Food and Agriculture, by contrast, can issue fines as well as tell manufacturers to remove products from the market. Spokesman Lyle said staff members recently have stepped up oversight of the organic fertilizer sector. In 16 inspection visits since February 2007, officials have found only minor violations, he said.
Though the state forced California Liquid Fertilizer to pull its leading product, Townsley stayed in business at the Gonzales plant. In January 2008, the factory was sold to Converted Organics Inc., a publicly traded fertilizer maker headquartered in Boston. Townsley is now a technology officer for Converted Organics. His base salary is $200,000 a year.
from The Sacramento Bee

New Additive Makes Plastic Compostable

AUSTRALIA - A new 'bio-compostable' plastic that makes mulch out of bottles and packaging is coming to a store near you.
The new product enables all plastics, except PVC, to biodegrade or compost into a non-toxic bi-product that's safe to breakdown in the environment. Called Goody G1, it can simply be incorporated into existing manufacturing systems making any plastic more environment-friendly.
"We can now actually turn plastic into a natural resource," said Nick Paech, Director of Goody. The company claims that Goody G1 will turn a 26-gram PET bottle into approximately 13 g of compost within 90 days.
"This is a massive breakthrough," said Paech.
A few bioplastics are on the market, but the new technology enables any plastic to become 'bio-compostable' just by using the additive.
Goody claim that the quality of the plastic is not affected until it starts to break-down. Manufacturers can decide how long they want the product to last simply by varying the amount of additive used - even up to five years.
Some bioplastics in the past have left toxic residues, leading to criticism of the industry. The environmental effects of bioplastics are also not yet strictly monitored. This has led to the Australian Government funding the development of a comprehensive set of standards for degradable plastics.
Goody G1 is the only product of its kind to achieve the Australian Standard for being 'bio-compostable', being tested by Flinders University in South Australia.
'Bio-compostable' means it will decompose under conditions with high airflow - like home and industrial compost - or biodegrade in oxygen-starved condition, such as in landfills.
"Goody is cutting edge technology - it has been through and passed an extensive range of testing," said Andrew Ball, Chair in Environmental Biology and Flinders Univeristy.
The product performs best when the plastics are composted industrially; however, it breaks down well in home compost, and will even disappear in landfill according to the Goody website.
"I see a great future for degradable plastics, as well as fully renewable plastics [plastics from renewable resources] and bioplastics [plastics from biological resources]," said Peter Halley, a materials scientist from University of Queensland.
This is due to the limited oil resources, waste problems and the problems of sustainability in plastic manufacturing, he added.
from G Online

Glass Recycling Not Paying

NEW JERSEY - In the early days of recycling, glass was one of the materials that made it worthwhile.
Consumers or recycling centers sorted used glass containers according to color. Utilities authorities sold truckloads of recycled glass to companies that turned it into new glass containers.
But in the past 30 years, cracks have developed in the glass-recycling process.
Most glass manufacturers in southern New Jersey quit buying recycled glass for reuse because it was too easily contaminated. One plant in Cumberland County still buys small quantities - but only clear.
As prices for recycled glass fell and the cost of fuel for transporting it increased, it started to cost more to move recycled glass than it was worth.
And once glass is broken or crushed for possible reuse, it becomes highly abrasive and expensive just to handle.
The result: Glass recycling no longer makes economic sense.
Glass now costs recycling companies money. They could pay more for recyclables collected by counties and municipalities if those loads didn't contain glass.
And most glass containers collected in southern New Jersey now are transported, ground up and put in landfills anyway - as temporary cover for the trash being dumped there.
That's probably not environmentally friendly. If the glass were put directly into the landfill with the rest of the trash, the energy use and pollution from the additional truck transport and mechanical processing would be avoided.
Negative worth
Omni Recycling in Gloucester Township, Camden County, was southern New Jersey's first single-stream recycler. It buys unsorted recyclables from many government agencies, including the Atlantic County Utilities Authority.
Kevin Carducci, plant manager, said this month that Omni and most other recyclers would prefer not to have any glass in those loads of recyclables.
Omni extracts the glass and crushes it. Most ends up as a sand-like aggregate with pieces less than 3/8-inch. That gets shipped to a landfill for use as cover, he said.
The larger pieces that remain get sent to another facility for sorting and possible recycling. "We pay to have that hauled away," Carducci said.
Leone Industries in Bridgeton is one of the few companies buying recycled glass. It buys mostly bora silicate glass, but it accepts some consumer glass as long as it is clear.
Clear recycled bottles are worth about $24 per ton, according to Scrapindex.com. But mixed scrap glass is worth just $4.50 per ton.
Do the math: A 30-ton truckload would be worth $135, not enough to pay for the diesel, truck, insurance and driver to take it very far.
Fred Neary, a representative for FCR Recycling in Camden, another processor of Atlantic County recyclables, said glass costs the company money.
"It has a negative value to us and most processors in this area," Neary said.
Glass vs. plastic
The Atlantic County Utilities Authority has an impressive record of environmental innovation.
In 1988, it was the first county in the state to start recycling plastics. It pioneered turning yard waste into compost and reselling it in the region. And it built the East Coast's first wind farm in 2005 in Atlantic City.
Richard Dovey, the authority's longtime president, said glass recycling no longer is economically viable.
"You don't get much for it, and the cost of getting it to that point is very much cost-prohibitive," Dovey said.
He said 25 years ago, when there was a local market for recycled glass at Cumberland County plants, glass was valuable and a driver of recycling efforts. Now, some specialty plants still accept glass, but "their specifications are so tight that they're difficult to achieve."
Meanwhile, the plastics that began as such a challenge to recycle have turned out to be easier and less costly to handle, and much more valuable.
Recycled plastics on the spot market typically fetch about $440 per ton - about 100 times as valuable as recycled glass.
"The glass and plastic price ratio has flipped in the last 25 years," Dovey said.
And there's much more plastic to recycle.
There were 12.7 million tons of glass and only 2.9 million tons of plastic in the U.S. municipal waste stream in 1970, according to Environmental Protection Agency data gathered by Franklin Associates.
In 2006 - the most recent data available - glass wasn't much changed at 13.2 million tons. But plastics now account for 29.5 million tons of municipal waste each year.
One reason is that since they are lighter and don't shatter into dangerously sharp pieces, plastic containers increasingly are used for consumer products rather than glass.
On the home front
Leah Drobel, of Egg Harbor Township, was surprised to hear Wednesday that there is no market for recycled glass.
"Wow, that's disappointing," she said, adding that at least it's not going into the landfill.
Then she was told most recycled glass ends up in landfills anyway.
"We go to the trouble to rinse it, put it in recycling buckets and then put it out, and it's not even used?" Drobel said. "So why are we recycling glass? We should just be trashing it."
Adrianne Larson, of Northfield, has been separating and putting out her recyclables for more than 20 years.
She said Wednesday she had noticed a single sentence in an Atlantic County Utilities Authority recycling insert in her newspaper. It said there was no market for recycled glass.
"It really disturbed me when I read that," Larson said. She called the ACUA, and they confirmed it.
"That kind of worries me, that a lot of people are taking the time to put out glass and there's no market for it," she said. "Is it worth our while, or are we just wasting money?"
Time to stop?
There is no specific mandate to recycle glass or anything else, the ACUA's Dovey said - just a state requirement to recycle where it makes economic sense.
So why does glass recycling continue?
"It's tradition. Almost everybody in this business started with that, and it's hard to give up," Dovey said. "I'm not aware of anything that is likely to turn it around."
One force pushing against the expense of glass recycling is the strain on government budgets in a slumping economy. Dovey agreed the pressure on municipal and government budgets is only going to get worse - and eventually might help shift opinion about glass recycling.
"It's really giving up the ghost, and it's hard to do," he said.
"We're not ready to do that. I'm ready to start talking about it, but you almost have to get people used to the idea," Dovey said.
from press of Atlantic City

Buying Fruit From Africa?

United Kingdom - Fruit and vegetables have long been a fertile green subject, as demonstrated by the classic ethical conundrum: 'Is it preferable to eat an air-freighted organic apple or a local, non-organic apple?' The answer is complex, thanks partly to the dual issues of a global food crisis and the credit crunch. In the UK we have famously underestimated the outsourcing of our food growing - more than 90 per cent of the fruit and almost 40 per cent of the vegetables we eat are now imported. This country has not been self-sufficient in terms of food for nearly two decades.
The traditional green response has been to champion local, seasonal fruit and veg. Yet DIFD (Department for International Development) aims to make more use of Africa as a giant bread basket (or fruit bowl), with a £2m fund 'to connect African suppliers with the UK supermarket shelf'. Given that our demand for pineapples rose by 24 per cent last year, there is a practical advantage. But the scheme also hints at the 'ethical' opportunity to help African farmers out of poverty. Seven out of 10 Africans depend on agriculture for their livelihoods; UK shoppers spend £1m a day on fruit and veg from Africa, and agriculture provides 30 per cent of Africa's GDP. But investment is badly needed; as ex-Nigerian president turned farmer Olusegun Obasanjo puts it: 'Unless somebody is growing cocaine, no farmer can recoup loans invested in agriculture with our high interest rates.'
World food security is at its lowest since records began in 1960. Measured by grain inventories, there is just enough grain in reserve to last for 50 days. Africa has a part to play to provide more food, but this needs to go to its own citizens, given that 30 per cent of the population is malnourished and more than 200m people are chronically hungry. Producing food for export is cited by many as a reverse Robin Hood.
Perhaps we rich consumers won't be too worried until global conditions affect the pineapple inventory - and climate scientists warn that food production in Africa will plummet due to water stress by 2020. For example, each Kenya green bean contains four litres of 'embedded water'.
It's not enough to impose a thoughtless 'agricultural revolution' on Africa: it will greedily soak up more water and produce huge emissions and pollution through fertilisers. Instead, any scheme must prove that African producers are being given the opportunity to focus on processed, value-added goods for export (this is where the value is, as demonstrated by equitrade.org). The international Slow Food movement (slowfood.org.uk) works with producers in Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone to link food production to biodiversity conservation and keep the focus on strengthening local markets first. These are the schemes more likely to allow us to eat our way out of trouble.
from The Quardian

Vermont Compost Told To Halt Operations

MONTPELIER, VERMONT – The Natural Resources Board has told Karl Hammer to halt operations at Vermont Compost Co., located on Main Street a few miles outside of the state's capital city.
Hammer's company, along with the composting operation in Burlington's Intervale, have been used as examples of how to get food scraps out of the landfill and into people's gardens and farms.
But both have run into trouble with state regulators and neighbors. In Hammer's case the question at the root of the matter is whether his site in Montpelier is a farm – therefore outside the jurisdiction of the Act 250 land use rules – or a manufacturing company subject to them.
Early this year Hammer was told he needs a permit under the state's sweeping land use regulation to run the composting facility. He appealed that "jurisdictional opinion," but the Natural Resources Board has now declined to allow him to keep operating until that process is complete.
In addition to directing Hammer to "immediately cease any and all commercial composting operations," as well as "immediately remove all compost materials" and "all improvements constructed for any and all composting operations," the letter from the board levied an $18,000 fine against Vermont Compost Co.
It is possible for Hammer to appeal the decision.
"I really am not clear what it means," he said. "We are in the process of appealing the original (jurisdictional opinion)."
Hammer has 15 days to appeal the new order to the Environmental Court, which is already hearing the earlier appeal.
John Hasen, attorney for the Natural Resources Board, said the board is acting to halt what it believes is an ongoing violation of land use law.
"Mr. Hammer is currently in violation of Act 250," he said. "If he wants to come in and show he is exempt, he is welcome to do that."
The Legislature this year passed a law that exempted composting operations from Act 250 review for two years. However, that only applies to those sites that have a solid waste permit from the Agency of Natural Resources, which Hammer's Montpelier operation does not. He has a related plot in East Montpelier that does have such a permit, as does the Intervale.
In the past Hammer has argued his Montpelier site is a farm because he raises chickens and mules there and because he operates under contract with Fairmont Farms to process their cow Fairmont Farms to process their cow manure. That, he has said, means his compost company should be considered an agricultural use.
However, since the bulk of the material composted does not come from his own farm (or from the Montpelier site), the composting operation is not farming, the Natural Resources Board and the District Environmental Commission has ruled.
Part of Hammer's site could be considered a farm, but part of it is a compost manufacturing facility and therefore requires an Act 250 permit, regulators have said.
"He is in violation and should not be operating," Hasen said.
Meanwhile the fate of the Intervale Center is still up in the air. State and federal authorities have raised questions about the site being in a floodway, about damage to archeological sites from digging on the property and about other alleged violations.
State officials and those who are involved with the Intervale Center are now negotiating over the future of the project – which draws many tons of compostable waste from landfills – and whether a temporary site can be found so the composting operation can continue.
After a discussion by the Montpelier City Council, Hammer is in mediation with his neighbors, who have objected to food waste dropped on their property by birds foraging on his land, about his chickens roaming their property and other problems.
"I am hopeful that things will get better," said Barbara LaRosa, who lives next door. "We want basic respect for the property we pay taxes on."
from Times Argus