Environmentalists grow impatient over tactics to combat glassy-winged sharpshooter
By Tara Treasurefield
FROM 1993 until a few months ago, Maxina Ventura lived in Schellville in the Sonoma Valley, where pesticides are sprayed on vineyards by both ground and air. A mother of two small children, Ventura says, “Research I did at the agricultural department showed me that we were being covered with cancer-causing and hormone-disrupting chemicals, as well as heavy neurotoxins.
“Suddenly all the cancer deaths in the neighborhood made sense, and our thyroid, nervous system, and respiratory problems were no longer surprising.”
Schellville residents made phone calls, wrote letters, and met with the county Agricultural Commission and county Supervisor Mike Cale to express their concerns. But in the end, they decided that the only way to protect their families was to leave the county. “In my immediate neighborhood, around one vineyard, five households have been displaced by pesticides and others are considering leaving,” says Ventura. “Tractor spraying and aerial spraying are equally harmful. Several people moved to get away from the drift caused by tractor spraying.”
Ventura and her neighbors may prove to be the first wave of a mass exodus from California’s sprawling Wine Country. It appears that everyone who can is ready and willing to spend taxpayer money to fight Pierce’s disease, which can kill grape vines. The current strategy is primarily to use nerve poisons against the glassy-winged sharpshooter, one of the bugs that sometimes carries Pierce’s disease.
With activists throughout Sonoma County vowing to fight spraying through civil disobedience, that strategy will be part of a discussion at two public forums scheduled in the next two weeks in Sonoma County. The ante was raised this week after inspectors found an adult glassy winged sharpshooter–the first discovered in Sonoma County–at a Healdsburg nursury.
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the wine industry has contributed $250,000 to this effort. In comparison, government officials have earmarked a whopping $40 million of taxpayer funds, and that’s just for starters.
Senate Bill 671, signed by Gov. Davis in May, calls for at least $15 million for sharpshooter/Pierce’s disease control every year until 2006. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., proposed that Congress contribute another $3 million to the anti-sharpshooter war chest. Even more generous, Congress voted to match whatever California contributes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has invested an additional $860,000.
“The sharpshooter is a threat, and we want to deal with it in the smallest area possible,” says Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner John Westoby. “A lot of things are being looked at, including organics and bio-control agents, but carbaryl looks good right now.”
According to Westoby, the Agricultural Commission will spray carbaryl on the ground in residential areas, but won’t aerial spray.
“We can’t prevent growers from aerial spraying their crops,” he says. “If they do, we’ll be out there watching any applications they did.”
But it’s a big county, and even now the Agricultural Commission can’t witness every incident of pesticide drift.
THOUGH AERIAL spraying occurs now in Schellville and other areas, Nick Frey, executive director of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association, says, “I think it’s very unlikely that growers will aerial spray to combat the sharpshooter. It’s not a very effective tool, and it’s not the method that anyone would recommend.”
He says that the association doesn’t support aerial spraying in residential areas, but growers might want to aerial spray if the sharpshooter appeared in an area that couldn’t be accessed very well.
While spraying is most likely in residential and agricultural areas, infested host plants in commercial areas could also be sprayed. The current practice is to spray any infested area, and regulations from CDFA define an infestation as “five or more adult insects within any five-day period and within a 300-yard radius, or the detection of multiple life stages.”
It’s a safe bet that some people will resist spraying. In that case, says Westoby, “We’d try to get permission. If we couldn’t get onto the property, we’d get an inspection warrant, and if we determined that it was necessary to treat, we’d get a court order to do an abatement [spraying].”
Westoby sympathizes with organic farmers, who could lose their certification if their crops are sprayed with a pesticide that’s not approved by California Certified Organic Farmers. “If they can come up with an organic material that would work, great,” he says. But he’s reluctant to extend the same courtesy to other county residents who object to pesticide spraying where they live.
“We’d have to check it through the Science Advisory Panel and through the CDFA. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything organic that would be effective,” he says.
Chris Malen, a member of the executive committee of the Napa County Sierra Club, is impatient with the emphasis on protecting vineyards. “Not all of us think wine is so important that we should be sprayed for it. The wine industry has engineered its own demise with monoculture. They need to correct their mistake without forcing poison on the rest of us,” she says.
“To be sprayed in our own homes is a fundamental violation of our constitutional rights. It’s morally wrong.”
Sondra Cooper, a physical therapist in Sonoma, agrees. “They need to come up with an alternative to spraying pesticides on my property. That’s not an appropriate answer to their problem. I refuse to allow them to come onto my property,” she says.
Georgia Kelly, director of Praxis Peace Institute in Sonoma, has another idea.
“Wine is a luxury. To put a luxury item ahead of the health of the people is unacceptable,” she says. “People need to realize that we can respond to forced spraying by boycotting California wine.”
A Pesticides Forum, sponsored by the Town Hall Coalition, will be held Thursday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m., at the First Congregational Church, 252 W. Spain St., Sonoma. A public meeting on the glassy-winged sharpshooter will be conducted Thursday, Sept. 28, at 5:30 p.m., by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, 575 Administration Drive, Santa Rosa.
Tara Treasurefield is chair of the Town Hall Coalition Toxics Committee.
From the September 21-27, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.
