A controversy over where Orange County and Los Angeles can send their sewage sludge might go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Register file photo of sewage sludge -- or biosolids -- being spread in Kern County by Ygnacio Nanetti.

For years, sanitation agencies in both places sent their sludge to Kern County farmers to be spread on agricultural fields as fertilizer. But in 2006, Kern County voters passed an initiative calling for a ban on spreading sewage sludge — called biosolids — on unincorporated land there.

Orange and L.A. sued and won a ruling in federal court overturning Kern County’s ban.

But this week, a state appellate court voided that decision and sent the case back to a lower court.

L.A. and Orange County are now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

In the meantime, both have continued sending sludge to Kern County. The Orange County Sanitation District sends about 90,000 tons of sludge a year to southern Kern County, though it is used for composting, not agriculture, said Ed Torres, the district’s director of technical services.

The city of Los Angeles has been sending about 450,000 tons a year to a Kern County farm.

While Los Angeles officials say it would cost them millions to send the sludge to another site, likely one in Arizona, Orange County has already shifted its sludge into other areas.

About a third of it still goes to Kern, but because it is used for composting, it doesn’t violate the ban on land application, Torres said.

A third also goes to Rialto, another third to western and central Arizona. The district generates about 240,000 tons of biosolids  each year, and it will cost about $26 million to process the sludge in 2010, Torres said.

If the district, which began sending sludge to new destinations in 2008, were to resume sending all of it to Kern County, it could save nearly half the cost. But Torres said that given the “volatility” of the market,  Orange County Sanitation would be unlikely to place “all our eggs in one basket.”

Still, the agency remains part of the court case.

“We thought the ban was bad law,” Torres said. “The reason we’re still in it is to support our sister organizations and the city of L.A.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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