Fumigation Controversy Is a Headache for All Sides

The drumbeat is getting louder for actions to ease the annual battles over the farm pesticide methyl bromide.

People who live near treated fields say they can’t live with it. Strawberry growers say they can’t live without it. County and state officials are under increasing pressure to referee.

Last week, James Wells, director of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation, convened a hearing at which dozens of Ventura County residents testified that fumigation has made them sick or driven them from their homes.

“My grandfathers were both farmers,” declared Lynda Uvari, who lives near the Montalvo Ranch strawberry fields in east Ventura. “They didn’t use pesticides like methyl bromide and yes, they struggled. But they made an honest living and they didn’t hurt people.”

Numerous farmers in the steamy school cafeteria listened quietly.

In the old days, frequent crop rotation prevented buildup of nematodes and other pests that can reduce yield by 50% or more. But now that development has gobbled up much of the land with the sandy soil and gentle microclimates that the finicky berries require, there is greater pressure to replant the same fields year after year.

Methyl bromide, they say, makes that possible.

The chemical is injected 18 to 24 inches into the soil, which is quickly covered with plastic tarps for five days or longer. Problems arise when fumes escape and blow into nearby residential areas. The odorless gas is mixed with a tear gas as a warning agent, and people exposed to the combination have complained of headaches, breathing problems, watery eyes, a persistent metallic taste and other symptoms.

That is what neighbors of Montalvo Ranch say happened last summer. Tarps were torn and the minimal buffer zone required by the county proved inadequate.

“No one has the right to force these conditions on my family again,” neighbor Raili West told Wells, her anger multiplied by the reception she says her complaints received from the agriculture commissioner.

Within the next week or so, Wells will decide whether and under what conditions fumigation may proceed at Montalvo Ranch and at two fields adjacent to the Lamplighter Mobile Home Estates in Camarillo.

Like many of the worried neighbors who spoke at the hearing, we support farming and the people who do it. Farmers have families, too, and would certainly prefer not to have to deal with this headache every summer.

But there are some steps Wells and the Ventura County ag commissioner should take to reduce this recurring conflict:

* Use this season’s fumigation of more isolated fields for an intensive monitoring program to determine safer buffer zones.

* Require even heavier tarps on fields adjacent to residential areas.

* Increase efforts to notify neighbors of when fumigation will take place and what it means. Farmers say they are working to do this.

* Educate local doctors to recognize and diagnose pesticide exposure symptoms.

* Remind the ag commissioner and his staff that although most of their dealings are with Ventura County’s farmers, they are responsible to other citizens as well. Some residents who contacted that office with questions or complaints have received helpful and respectful service, but others have gotten the runaround or worse.

Representatives of California’s multibillion-dollar farming industry say they are looking hard to find less problematic alternatives to methyl bromide. In part, that is because methyl bromide is scheduled to be outlawed nationwide at the end of 2000, over concerns about its effect on the ozone layer.

But the industry is also lobbying vigorously to change or abolish that deadline and keep the substance legal.

We suggest those lobbying dollars would be better spent on research because, as last week’s hearing demonstrates, field use of methyl bromide is a headache for everyone and it isn’t going away.