Copyright 2004 the Fresno Bee

HANFORD
Kettleman City, 45 minutes west of the Kings County seat here, is not for lovers.
Some months it can be a reminder of hell on Earth, split in two by the most boring stretch of Interstate 5 on the whole West Coast. East, you have the little town: bleak, sleepy, riddled full of power lines. West are the blazing-hot parking lots of Shell and Exxon and clean bathrooms at Carl's Jr. on the way to Cambria.
Personally, no, I wouldn't give you 5 cents for a million acres in all four directions out of there. But it's a real town where real people live -- and during their last 48 hours, they've rocked it past Disneyland as ''The Happiest Place on Earth!''
And so here at the county government center Wednesday stood Mary Lou Mares facing three television cameras from Fresno. A town ringleader against the biggest corporate waste handler on Earth, she stood in a small knot of people and proclaimed: ''There's victory. There's joy. There's crying. There's all kinds of emotions going on in this little town.''
The ''greatest news,'' she called it, such a miracle in such an unlikely barrio town: Winning the big one! You grow up working in the irrigated furrows of other peoples' farms, feeling apathetic, powerless and lacking much formal education or self-esteem, you don't expect deep down you're going to beat them, smart fancy Anglos in good suits, including a chairman and CEO paid $1.3 million a year in a suburb of Chicago.
''This is just to show that La Raza can do it,'' she said, still reeling from the news herself.
Beating the monster: Unbelievably, they'd driven the ''monster,'' the incinerator, the very bad incinerador away. And Tuesday night at another ringleader's house, Espy Maya's, a gang of 25 ate fried chicken and sweet bread, washing it down with Freixenet champagne.
Oh, they laughed! They told war stories of their many battles -- and toasted their unlikely coalition of K.C. Latinos and Greenpeace types in black Converse tennis shoes, their young lawyer with his pierced ear and the other activists from throughout California.
And to the cameras Wednesday they said they had done it. They had driven Chemical Waste Management to abandon its $50 million toxic-waste incinerator. And while more likely it was the new Clinton administration or a changing industrial financial picture, it was partly true: They and their little town mucked things up pretty bad, publicity-wise and politically, for a company that ranks high in Business Week's Global 1000.
The official spin: As for the company, the official spin is that American industry is cutting down on toxic waste. Which is interesting, because during a tour of its K.C. plant a year ago, the official spin was about the overwhelming amount of toxic waste American industry produces.
Whatever the spin, the San Joaquin Valley with its emergent Green Power has won another one. In five years now, it has managed to tank several coal-burning plants, beat the big farms at water reform, create a Valley air-pollution district and even wangle money from manufacturers of the pesticide DBCP.
Add now an incinerator to the list. Even out in dusty old Kettleman City they showed you can rise up and win big!
JimWasserman is a Bee staff writer. For a sneak preview of his column, call BeeLine 443-2400, ext. 2160, the night before.