The Pesticide Campaign:Protecting Valley Residents from Pesticide Air Pollution and Drift
BACKGROUND: CRPE has long dedicated organizing and litigation resources to address the harmful impacts that pesticide use has on our air quality and our health and safety. The San Joaquin Valley suffers from some of the worst air quality in the country. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by pesticides are ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) precursors. VOC is a smog-forming pollutant in the summertime, and also forms dangerous PM2.5 pollution in the winter. Unlike ozone in the upper atmosphere, ground-level ozone has various harmful health and environmental effects, including damaging lung tissue, crops, and vegetation, and exacerbating asthma, reducing lung capacity, increasing respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions, and increasing school and work absenteeism. The health effects of ozone include the exacerbation of asthma and emphysema, and adverse effects on children and the elderly. Persons with respiratory illnesses, children who are active outdoors, and adults who engage in heavy manual labor or vigorous exercise are particularly vulnerable to adverse health effects from ozone exposure. San Joaquin Valley residents are subjected to dangerous levels of PM2.5. These fine particulates have similar effects as smog, and has been proven to damage the body in similar ways to cigarette smoking. It is a major factor in premature death in residents with cardio-pulmonary disease, but anyone living in an area with high particulate matter pollution is at risk. Long-term exposure to PM2.5 pollution has been found to increase the rate of slowed lung function growth in children and teenagers, cause significant damage to the small airways of the lungs, as well as cause death from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. Volatile by definition, VOC-emitting pesticides are highly prone to drifting away from where they are applied onto farmworkers and rural communities. Most VOC-emitting pesticides are fumigants, the most dangerous and toxic pesticides used in agriculture. Pesticide use not only worsens our air quality, but pesticide exposure is a risk factor for multiple types of childhood cancer and birth defects, prostate cancer, lung cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, and nervous system disorders. In addition, exposure to pesticides can both cause asthma and aggravate it. Recent studies have found that children who are exposed to pesticides exposure performed significantly lower than their peers in IQ tests. Our communities unnecessarily suffer multiple health risks because of the Department of Pesticide Regulation’s unwillingness to hold the agricultural industry accountable to the laws and regulations that protect us. CRPE has fought for justice in our communities in the courts and the legislature. In 2008, our pesticide campaign succeeded in forcing the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) to adopt regulations to control smog-forming VOC emissions from pesticides, as they had promised to do as far back as 1994. While our victory in El Comité para el Bienestar de Earlimart v. Helliker was reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, we have prevented DPR from rescinding the regulations it had adopted pursuant to the now vacated court order. Our clients fought DPR’s proposal to gut the regulations in the San Joaquin Valley, changing the amount of reductions required from 20% measured from 1990 levels to 12%. We sued DPR under the California Environmental Quality Act, arguing that DPR failed to analyze the impacts of this “backsliding” and consider alternatives. In December 2009, the Sacramento Superior Court rejected our arguments. CRPE then sent a 60-day notice of intent to sue letter under the Clean Air Act to DPR and the Air Resources Board (ARB), arguing that the 12% “backsliding” violated the State Implementation Plan, which included a 20% requirement for the Valley. DPR and ARB responded to that letter by adopting a revision to the State Implementation Plan (SIP) that changed the Valley’s duty to only 12% and submitted it to EPA as an amendment to the 8-hour ozone attainment plan ARB adopted in 2007. We are waiting for EPA to propose approving the backsliding, and plan to hold EPA accountable using section 110(l) of the Clean Air Act which prohibits such backsliding unless EPA finds that the change will not interfere with attainment, reasonable further progress, or any other requirement of the Act. We have also filed two petitions for review in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that EPA’s actions to approve the 1994 1-hour ozone plan and the 2004 South Coast ozone plan violated the Clean Air Act. Specifically, because the Ninth Circuit ruled in the El Comité case that DPR’s promise to adopt Pesticide VOC regulations was not enforceable, we are arguing that EPA should have disapproved that unenforceable promise and adopted a Federal Implementation Plan. The goal with those two petitions is to ensure that DPR and ARB have enforceable mechanisms to ensure that the percentage reductions required are enforceable by citizens. We expect oral argument on those two petitions in late 2010. In our legislative efforts, we borrowed a tactic from our opposition. In early 2009, CRPE blocked Big Ag’s attempt to pass a budget trailer bill that would have rolled back the Valley’s pesticide reductions from 20% to 12%. When the Legislature addressed the budget crisis again in the summer of 2009, CRPE drafted trailer bill language that would have mandated that DPR achieve 20% reductions from 1991 levels of pesticide emissions in the Valley. This language passed both the Senate and the Assembly, but unfortunately, the Democratic leadership decided to use it as a bargaining chip during budget negotiations and gave it away to the Republican opposition. This was a bitter defeat, because of the betrayal from legislators we thought supported clean air and environmental health. None of this advocacy would be possible without the strong leadership in the communities we serve. Our community members live and work in areas where the risks of pesticide drift are high, and whose air quality is compromised as a result of pesticide use. The result of CRPE’s community organizing is empowered community members who:
Building on a similar success in Tulare County in 2008, our organized communities won a recent victory in Kern County when the County Agricultural Commissioner adopted a new regulation creating a ¼ mile buffer zone around schools, limiting the use of restricted material pesticides. In addition, our advocacy and organizing creates new community-based science. With our partners Californians for Pesticide Reform, we encourage participation in the Lindsay Study, an air sampling and biomonitoring project, in which air and human tissue or fluid samples are measured for the presence of toxic chemicals or their breakdown products. Primary Contact: |
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GOAL: Protect rural communities from pesticide-related air pollution and from illegal pesticide drift