City Sells 79 Acres for $1.97 Million

The City Council has approved the $1.97-million sale of 79 acres to Oxnard-based Southland Sod Farms, which now leases the land.

Mark Norris, Oxnard’s waste-water superintendent, said his department will use the money to offset the $1.38-million purchase of land in Kern County last August.

Norris said the city bought the 79 acres at Casper and Hueneme roads in Oxnard in 1986 for about $1.4 million to compost waste-water byproducts with yard waste and other materials.

But fearing that the project might be incompatible with proposed development in the area, the city abandoned the effort and began leasing the parcel to Southland Sod Farms.

Norris said the city also later realized it could save money by using sewer sludge to fertilize crops, prompting the purchase of 1,150 acres in Kern County.

Under an eight-year partnership deal with USA Transport Inc., a Springville-based trucking company, Oxnard is shipping the sewer sludge to a farm near Wasco. There, the city plans to fertilize nonhuman consumption crops such as feed corn, cotton and alfalfa.

Oxnard hopes to save more than $136,000 a year by shipping byproducts from its waste-water treatment plant to the Kern County farm instead of to the Simi Valley Landfill and another sludge recycling site.