Farm’s Urban Neighbors Reap Worries : This Time, Open Space Encroaches on the Homeowners

Tom Nickell eased his canary-yellow Cadillac into the spacious driveway of a North City West home belonging to a young couple with several small children.

He put the car in park and pointed over a low fence at the 382 acres of furrowed, dusty growing fields that a local tomato grower had recently plowed into the floor of the adjacent San Dieguito Valley.

“It’s just too damned close,” said Nickell, president of the Senterra’s Ranch Homeowner’s Assn.--a cluster of residents whose homes sit on a picturesque ridge directly south of the Fairbanks Ranch Country Club.

“We’ve got lots of young families here who are concerned. Look for yourself. It’s right on top of us. And it’s getting closer.”

In North County, where new housing developments have steadily encroached upon the shrinking acres of available farmland, an odd twist has developed in which the neighbors complain not about new construction but about the open spaces of farmland.

The residents say the still-vacant growing fields already have yielded a fresh harvest of problems, including the destruction of natural ground cover that has caused uncontrolled dust storms.

But they also see the specter of a more serious problem: pesticide spraying. The tomato growers have applied to the county Department of Agriculture, Weights & Measures to ground-spray 15 chemical pesticides.

Several months ago, Nickell and his neighbors were startled to see the big bulldozers rumble into the once-pristine Gonzalez Canyon, scraping the nearby hillsides of their shady trees and brush.

The land, they would soon learn, was being cleared by Ukegawa Bros., a Carlsbad-based company that is one of the largest tomato growers in Southern California, to make way for a sizable vegetable-growing operation--in some places within reach of their own back yards.

Citing violations of pesticide use in the past involving Ukegawa Bros., Nickell and other homeowners living downwind of the fields worry that someday soon, dangerous chemicals might waft into their homes on some malevolent inland breeze--bringing the possibility of miscarriages, birth defects and other health problems.

And they know their complaints are not the first among North County homeowners to involve the growers. Residents say the Ukegawa Bros. are known as “the gypsy farmers” who do not own their own land but move from place to place, damaging the environment as they go.

Peter Mackauf, general manager for Ukegawa Bros., said that while his company has been invited to Wednesday’s meeting by county officials, they have not heard from any homeowners about specific complaints.

“Their concerns sound serious and need to be addressed,” he said. “We have no intent for that farm to be anything but an asset to the community. But there always seems to be this friction between resident and agriculture.

“It’s historic, it goes back as far as the ancient Egyptians. It’s like prisons and school. We all want better prisons, schools and fresh vegetables. But we don’t want them in our back yards.”

Today, Nickell and the presidents of five other area homeowner associations representing 1,800 residents will attend a county-sponsored meeting with a consortium of local government agencies, environmental groups and the tomato growers, to air their concerns over the agricultural project.

Nickell, a former vice president at the University of Southern California who once was a Los Angeles planning commissioner, said the recent furor over malathion spraying in Los Angeles and El Cajon has opened the eyes of government officials to such environmental concerns.

“We do not understand how, in these days of national and international concern and activism to protect the environment and end pollution,” Nickell wrote in a letter to the county, “that decisions are made which permit the destruction of large areas of natural habitat and introduce or wedge a major agricultural operation into a residential area.

“We desire to cohabit as good neighbors, but we cannot countenance the poisoning of our environment. There are many documented cases of individuals and communities being poisoned by pesticides--some occasioned by individual irresponsibility, political opportunism or bureaucratic oversights.”

County officials said that Wednesday’s meeting in Rancho Santa Fe was arranged in response to the homeowners’ frustrations in contacting city and county agencies involved with the growing fields.

Ukegawa Bros., which is leasing the land from a local builder while development plans are drawn up, received an agricultural permit from the city planning department and has applied for a pesticide-spraying permit from the county, said Jennifer Tierney, environmental issues coordinator for the county Department of Agriculture, Weights & Measures.

“This is a multi-jurisdictional problem,” she said. “So we’ve assembled a group of people from public agencies that have jurisdiction over the situation. We’re getting them all in one room so the homeowner groups can address their questions and concerns.”

Tierney acknowledged that, although Ukegawa Bros. has been cited twice in recent years for pesticide use--both times for workers not wearing gloves and other safety equipment--the problems were corrected.

And, although the company has applied for a permit for pesticide use for the 382-acre tract, that request is still under review. But one thing is for sure, she added: No aerial spraying will be allowed.

“Our department has the authority to restrict the grower’s permit,” Tierney said. “Proximity to residences, schools and open space is always taken into consideration. And there are levels of environmental review. We just don’t issue a permit in a vacuum.”

Moreover, previous feuds between Ukegawa Brothers and residents surrounding their fields in the eastern reaches of Carmel Valley resulted in new laws giving city officials the authority to impose certain conditions on agricultural permits--such as requiring that farming take place at least a quarter of a mile from residential neighborhoods.

But Nickell and his neighbors aren’t taking any chances on someone else protecting them from any chemical clouds. If and when a pesticide spraying permit is granted the growers, the group plans to hire an independent laboratory to conduct tests “so that we know when the poisoning of our environment reaches dangerous levels,” Nickell said.

“Their hearts are in the right place--but quite frankly there is a lack of people and budget for proper enforcement for all of these agencies,” he said.

The homeowner groups also will ask the county to notify residents 24 hours before certain pesticides are used, as well as provide a list of all proposed chemicals sprayed on a regular basis.

Tierney said the county is drafting an ordinance to protect such homeowners. The proposed agriculture enterprise ordinance will allow homeowners to keep better informed of what farmers plan to use what chemicals--even before residents move into a neighborhood.

Meanwhile, residents around Fairbanks Ranch and North City West will be closely watching the horizon, their noses to the air, fingers on their telephone dials, waiting for the first sign of polluted air by local tomato growers.

“How else do you respond as a concerned citizen?” Nickell said. “County agriculture is supposed to help farming but also protect people. Our monitoring will be our first line of defense.

“Because, at some point, you just have to circle the wagons.”