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Most Popular. Bakersfield High is the oldest high school in town and the mascot, the Driller, is directly tied to area industry. Benjamin Swall, 14, waits for his brother's football practice to end at Bakersfield High School. Red Simspon, a country music legend and Bakersfield native, smokes a cigarette outside of the Rasmussen Senior Center in Oildale, north of Bakersfield.
Merced Mendoza moves irrigation pipe in a field that will be used to grow alfalfa. The field is adjacent to and owned by Kern Oil and Refining Co. Mendoza is a leader for a men's group at Victory Outreach Church in Bakersfield that rents the land from the refinery to grow alfalfa that is then sold to a local dairy for feed.
The money earned from the feed helps fund the men's program for the church. This symbiotic relationship between resource companies and the community are played out throughout the region. As the water evaporates, leaving oil residue, hydrogen sulfide, methane and volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, are released in to the air. Dust devils can be seen reaching toward the sky during dry months in Bakersfield.
Dust is a pervasive problem that contributes to diminished air quality. The problem is exacerbated by the current drought in California.
Lucy Clark, 72, lives in the foothills north of Bakersfield. Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading. Two of the city's industries, oil and agriculture, while a vital part of the economy, don't often leave the area smelling pretty.
Bakersfield's not refreshing. A southwest Bakersfield resident recently wrote to the paper, hoping to unearth the source of a "stinking odor. He moved there nearly a year ago, after living in central Bakersfield for 10 years, during which time he never experienced an unpleasant odor, he wrote. It's our economy here," she said.
What we smell in the air depends on how moist the air is, said Miles Muzio, chief meteorologist for 29 Eyewitness News and Fox High humidity means the air is saturated, and the itty-bitty water molecules have more aerosol-carrying capacity.
Muzio said pungent smells can be in the air regardless of the season, particularly in the mornings when humidity is at its highest. In Oxnard, you smell manure wherever you're at," he said, because of all the strawberry fields.
Those with acute sniffers can report odors to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District for investigation, said Jon Adams, the district's director of compliance. In , the district's southern region received air-related complaints, the majority of which came from Kern County, Adams said. Of those , 18 percent were odor-related, such as smells from industrial sites like oil refineries or rendering plants. For example, people might think a foul smell is coming from a dairy when it could be stemming from a wastewater treatment plant.
Today the roses are gone. In their place oil rigs and pump-jacks bobbing up and down. I see flares of methane gas and smell the fumes of cancer-causing chemicals. Each community has its own personality. Spend any time in any of these communities and you understand why most people born and raised here never want to leave. It is home. Asthma rates here in the southern tip of the San Joaquin Valley are three times the national average.
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