New homes are full of questions and possibilities. What color to paint the walls? How to arrange the furniture? What to plant in the garden? The Obama family must have asked a lot of those same questions when they moved into the White House. However, the first lady’s dreams of growing an organic vegetable garden have been dragged down by a previous resident that refuses to leave: sludge.
Michelle Obama’s “organic” garden has been besieged by icky goo in the ground. As a result, the veggies aren’t quite what the first lady had in mind. According to Daily Finance, the National Park Service tested the soil in the vegetable patch and found “highly elevated levels of lead” due to sewage used as fertilizer.
So the question is: Who to blame? While dumping sewage into the ground sounds like a crime worthy of Mr. Burns 
from “The Simpsons,” the actual perpetrators were none other than the Clintons. Yep, back when Bill and Hillary were living it up in the White House, their gardening team used “sewage sludge for fertilizer.” The fiends!
Sounds gross, but it’s actually fairly common. However, it does mean that the highly touted “organic garden” will never “attain organic status.” The certification process doesn’t allow “the use of sludge as a fertilizer substitute.” And there’s another problem: If Malia and Sasha weren’t into eating their veggies before, it’s going to be that much harder to get ‘em to eat ‘em now.
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Sludge in the Garden
by Mike Krumboltz
Julia
on 02 Aug 2009 at 6:43 am
The Obamas would be setting a much better example by purchasing all of their organic vegetables from an organic farmer - who could probably use the money.
While their at it, if they’re trying to be green, how about ditching the bottled water?
Jack
on 12 Aug 2009 at 1:05 pm
There’s no way ever it will work its way out? Now I can never look at the White House lawn the same way again. But what a perfect metaphor for so many things wrong with the “ideal” we uphold from suburbia to Washington.