A CALLER noticed a full pallet of ammonium phosphate at Friedman Brothers, Ukiah, with a note attached that said, “Special Order, Mateel Community Center.” Why would the Mateel want golf course (and/or bomb making) chemicals? We called the Mateel to find out if they’d ordered it, and if they had, why. Sports stadiums use this stuff to green up their grass, but it’s bad mojo, as Ashley, the pleasant young woman who answered the phone at the Mateel agreed. “It’s like gnarly stuff,” Ashley said, before assuring me that she’d call the Mateel’s plant manager, Johnny, and get back to me. She didn’t. Yet. And probably won’t. But we’ve learned that the Mateel is using this “gnarly” brew to make the grass green in the concert bowl smack on the battered Eel River, just in time for their revived Reggae on the River. Years ago we complained that the Mateel, cynosure of everything good and organically pure in a poisoned America, had made its front door out of rare and mostly extinct hardwoods. But using this stuff anywhere near the Eel borders on criminal irresponsibility.
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