Fresno's poo problem has received little attention here, but it's the talk of the town in Bakersfield. The Fresno City council was scheduled to vote today on a controversial plan to dump the sludge on Kern County farmland.

State senator Dean Florez is against the plan to dump 50,000 tons of human sewage on Kern farmland.

In his May letter to Fresno City Council members, Florez warns that voting to approve the Tule/Magan Ranch contract would be a negative for the agricultural community in the Valley, âââ??¬¡Ãƒ?Æ?ââ?¬Å¾Ã?Æ?úforever locking up that landâââ??¬¡Ãƒ?Æ?ââ?¬Å¾Ã?Æ?Ã?¹ for only those crops which are not consumed by humans. In addition, marketability of surrounding farms may be hampered by the stigma of the land being fertilized by treated human waste.

Oh come on, a little fecal stigma is nothing Buck Owens couldn't fix. Opponents of sludge sloshing have collected enough signatures to put a ban of the practice on the 2006 ballot.

UPDATE: The council voted not to dump sludge on Kern County.