WATSONVILLE — The Watsonville City Council passed a first-of-its-kind resolution Tuesday that asks the County Agricultural Commissioner to publicly post information specifically on toxic pesticide applications.
The commissioner receives information from growers, called notices of intent, that lay out what restricted material pesticides will be applied, how much will be applied and where the application will take place. These are pesticides considered to be of greater risk to human health. The commissioner must approve or deny the planned applications, depending on if they may have harmful impacts on the environment and community.
There’s currently no easy-to-access way for the public to see where and when applications will happen.
The resolution, which passed 6-1 with Councilwoman Trina Coffman dissenting, requests that the agricultural commissioner posts these notices online prior to pesticide applying.
“We’re notifying the agricultural commissioner that the community wants more information and he should make this more accessible to the community,” District 2 Councilman Aurelio Gonzalez told the Sentinel.
Still, Gonzalez said, the measure doesn’t have teeth. The commissioner oversees Santa Cruz County at large, which is outside the jurisdiction of the Watsonville City Council.
Even though the resolution is largely symbolic, Gonzalez said, it’s still crucial for the Pajaro Valley and beyond.
“There’s no one in the state that’s required to put this information on a website and make it accessible. So we’re frontiering this,” he said.
For his part, the current Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner Juan Hidalgo said that posting notices of intent online would put a strain on an office that is already stretched thin.
“I do not have resources to dedicate to that work,” Hidalgo said during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
“My staff and I remain committed to continuing to work with our community members who may have concerns about the use of pesticides on commercial farms,” Hidalgo added.
According to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, more than 1.4 million pounds of pesticides were used in 2017 across Santa Cruz County. Of that, 1.1 million pounds were fumigants. The most heavily used pesticides in the county are chloropicrin — or tear gas, and 1,3—dichloropropene.
Exposure to chloropicrin can cause irritation of the lungs and throat, but the long term health impacts are not as well understood.
1,3—dichloropropene is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This pesticide has been detected at Ohlone Elementary in North Monterey County at concentrations exceeding the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s 0.1 parts per billion level of concern for children.
Dozens of community members voiced their support for the resolution at the meeting, and their concerns about the cumulative impact of exposures to pesticides.
“This is an issue of environmental racism,” Margaret Rosa, a kindergarten teacher at Amesti Elementary School said during Tuesday’s meeting. “A lot of our families are not aware of the application of pesticides near their homes. And a lot of them face multiple exposures since they are farmworkers.”
Several local teachers said they worry for their students’ health, who are now taking classes at home, rather than in person, as a result of the pandemic. That means in some cases, students may be more exposed to pesticides, because near schools, growers are required to adhere to a quarter-mile pesticide buffer zone between 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. They’re also required to give five-day notice to schools for fumigant spraying.
“I commute in, so my exposure is down,” said Renaissance High School teacher Chris Webb. “I’m not at school. I’m not transiting there as much. But my students don’t have that privilege. Some of them live in areas that are at high risk.”
“We had fires last year and did rainy day recess type activities inside to avoid exposing our asthmatic students to them,” said George Feldman, another local teacher. “It would be nice to be able to do that with pesticides.”
One Pajaro Valley Unified School District student, Eliana Gonzales, said all of the schools they’ve attended have been adjacent to agricultural fields.
“And it really does concern me to think about all the long term effects that these pesticides can have on us youth,” Gonzales said. “This is a ‘no-brainer’ … anything that has such an effect on our community’s health should be announced to the public.”
“These are the first steps to take the next step, where we go to the state and say you guys need to require this,” Aurelio Gonzalez told the Sentinel. “… so all the agencies, all the agricultural commissioners make this information accessible.”
