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HONORABLE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS May 5, 1982 Page Nine So far as Forward, Inc. knows, Mr. Baier has not been hired by the County or the State to evaluate the site' s safety. The communications are filled with demands that the Farm Bureau be given access to private information 2) , with vague and quasi-statistical arguments that materials which are permitted, legally, to be disposed of at the site should not be placed, regardless of approval by those who have the juris- diction and duty to so approve, with carefully-worded statements that, while the site is not shown to be unsafe, it possibly could be unsafe, and with carefully-worded insinuations that Forward, Inc. is doing something improper while operating its lawful business. The San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation must understand that it is not the regulatory, enforcement or investigative agency. It is not a branch of government. All governmental agencies which do have jurisdiction have carefully and thoroughly examined the operation at the site, and have found it to be in substantial compliance. In specific response to Mr. Baier' s statement, we note that it does not state that anything improper is being done. It does make several insinuations, however: First, there is a long statistical argument on the amount of cadmium that could be placed on the site. This whole argument is based on a letter authorizing the site to receive waste from Liquid Waste Corporation, a division of Gimelli Bros. , dated 1979. This waste was never received, and Forward has no intention of receiving it. He then implies (although he is careful to state factually to the contrary) that the evaporation ponds may be leaking -this statement is purely hypothetical. Along the way he impugns Forward, Inc. by making the statement "Quite aside from the apparent fact that permeability tests were conducted on samples collected by the dump operator, rather than an impartial party. . . " and derogates all the investigative and geotechnical studies done at the time of establishing the site by referring to the " (supposedly) impervious soil" ; this type of unsupported insinuation, of innuendo and lack of hard fact is typical. Cadmium Let' s examine some facts about cadmium - which, again, we have never received. A concern was raised by the Farm Bureau about the toxic metal cadmium being introduced to agricultural soils. Cadmium toxicity is a serious problem