Repeated high-profile incidents of people being sickened by pesticides sprayed from aircraft in Oregon have increased calls for new regulations. But push-back from agricultural and timber industry groups has led to a bill that supporters of stronger rules say won’t solve the problem.
On a Wednesday morning in October, 2013, Gold Beach resident Kathryn Rickard stepped out of her house to investigate the persistent sound of a low-flying helicopter over her neighborhood.
Kathryn Rickard: “And immediately I was assaulted with a horrible, horrible smell. My sinuses were burning, my eyes were burning, I got a rash all over my arms. I felt sick to my stomach.”
Rickard says her husband came in from working outside with similar symptoms. Her pets were vomiting and lethargic, as well. Her dog Mr. Leo got so sick he finally had to be put down. Rickard later found she’d been sprayed with a chemical herbicide being applied to a nearby timber operation. When she and her neighbors called the state Department of Agriculture to report the incident and to get information, they hit a wall.
Kathryn Rickard: “It took six months before they even told us what we were sprayed with. It took them seven days to even come down and take any samples.”
A 2014 investigation by the Oregonian newspaper found state officials had a long history of minimizing pesticide spray complaints, failing to follow up on reports of exposure to the chemicals and botching subsequent investigations.
The Gold Beach incident generated a flurry of bills in the current session of the Oregon legislature. Representative Ann Lininger of Lake Oswego co-sponsored one of those bills. She says repeated incidents of aerial pesticide spraying going wrong require a strong response. But, she says, political reality in Salem isn’t working out that way.
Ann Lininger: “Unfortunately, it’s been hard for the advocates who care about preventing harm on the front end through advance notice, meaningful buffers and giving real public access to information on the back end to make a lot of headway.”
Lininger’s bill – co-sponsored with Senator Michael Dembrow of Portland-- would have required that residents get advance notice of aerial pesticide spraying in their area. It also would have mandated wide no-spray buffers for schools, residences and water sources and made available to the public information on who sprayed what pesticides where. All of Oregon’s neighboring states have similar rules. But objections from the timber and agricultural industries led to a compromise bill without those provisions. Scott Dahlman – policy director for Oregonians For Food And Shelter – says advance notice is simply not practical in a region with rapidly-changing weather.
Scott Dahlman: “Some of the previous proposals would want two weeks out an exact date that an application is going to take place. I can assure you all my forestry members would love the ability in western Oregon to predict two weeks out the exact day that the weather was going to be appropriate for them to make an application in a given area.”
Dahlman also says having to warn neighbors about every aerial pesticide application unfairly stigmatizes a standard and beneficial agricultural practice.
Scott Dahlman: “You’re suggesting actually that there’s something to be feared, that you’re going to be drifted upon, that you’re going to be exposed to pesticides and when it comes to legal applications, that’s not what’s happening.”
Dahlman and other industry representatives say the compromise bill working its way through the legislature is a good step forward. It would set up a notification hotline to accept reports of pesticide incidents, and it would hire investigators to check out such reports. It would require state agencies to work out procedures to promptly respond to reported violations. And it would increase penalties for those violations. Spray victim Kathryn Rickard concedes it would be an improvement. But she says it’s not enough.
Kathryn Rickard: “They’re hoping that if they pass something, we’re just going to go away. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.”
Rickard promises she and other advocates for tougher spraying rules will be back next session to push for more.
Copyright 2015 Jefferson Public Radio
