Rural California cheese factory is polluting the area's groundwater

A locally owned cheese factory is reponsible for spoiling drinking water wells in Hilmar, Calif., (population 3,900) in a region hit hard by agricultural unemployment, reports Jane Kay, of the San Francisco Chronicle. "The story of Hilmar is a classic tale of a company growing rapidly, bringing well-paying jobs but also environmental threats to a rural farm community. However, these are not corporate outsiders pitted against town residents; the owners of Hilmar Cheese are descendants of the community's founding families," writes Kay. "This pollution has become the evil of the town, and they don't know how to stop it," Rita Sanders, whose great-uncle built the first house in Hilmar, told Kay.

The company grew from producing 500,000 pounds of Monterey jack, cheddar and other cheeses per day in 1994 to 1.4 million pounds per day in 2010. The company's revenue is estimated at more than $1 billion a year and provides 780 jobs, according to the news report. The pollution to the wells includes arsenic, nitrates, barium and high salts. As residents' wells go bad, the company purchases the land and the owners move away. Hilmar Cheese is now under a state order to clean up waste discharges by February, according to Kay.  (Read more)