Wilson’s Bid for State EPA Gets Mixed Response : Farming: The agency would regulate pesticides, a move opposed by growers. A food safety group backs the plan.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to create a California Environmental Protection Agency was criticized by the Ventura County agricultural community on Wednesday but was supported by a Ventura food safety group.

The proposed Cal-EPA, unveiled Wednesday by Wilson in Sacramento, would bring together the functions of various individual state agencies in an effort to streamline decisions on state environmental issues.

Part of the plan calls for transferring the regulation of pesticides from the California Department of Food and Agriculture to the Cal-EPA, a move that county farmers say is unnecessary.

“California already leads the nation in pesticide enforcement regulation,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “It’s a very complex system driven by science and risk assessment over years and years.”

Under the direction of the Department of Food and Agriculture, county growers are required to account for every pesticide and chemical they apply to their crops, Laird said. The procedure makes the state’s regulations the most comprehensive in the nation.

“The regulations and degree of stringency are unequaled,” he said. “It would take a quantum leap to bring the rest of the nation up to where we are.”

But food safety groups, including Mothers and Others for Safe Food, praised Wilson’s proposal, saying it would provide more objective regulation of pesticide use.

“It would be my hope that the Cal-EPA would have the interest of everyone in the state at heart rather than just the farmers as they consider pesticide regulation,” said Frances Scharli, president of the group. “This is hopefully putting it in more objective hands.”

Scharli founded the organization in Ventura in 1989 to educate the public on pesticide use and to promote organic farming.

She acknowledged that county growers are diligent about reporting pesticides they use. But she said she “would like to see the Cal-EPA look more closely at the pesticides being applied in the county. Some of them are on a list of 55 known carcinogens published by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.”

Area growers said they are also frustrated with the speed that Wilson wants to put his plan into effect, said Don Reeder, president of the county Farm Bureau.

“We don’t know exactly what he wants to do, and he doesn’t know yet, either,” he said. “Wilson’s basing his plan on the public’s emotions, not on science. It has to be based on scientific facts and principles. It’s more important to him to get his program passed than to know which way it’s going.”

Laird said the agriculture industry was given only three days to respond in writing to the proposed reorganization.

“There’s a lot of details to be worked out,” he said. “Let’s go through this with the t ‘s crossed and the i ‘s dotted. You can’t just put through a concept paper without filling in the blanks.”

Laird cited a letter sent from state agriculture leaders to James M. Strock, whom Wilson has already named to direct the Cal-EPA. The letter urged Strock to keep pesticide regulation under the Department of Food and Agriculture.

“Growers are being asked to make a leap of faith in accepting the transfer of pesticide activities to the new agency, but they cannot be expected to make a blind leap,” the letter said.

“The whole ag industry is concerned,” Laird said. “The complexity of what this involves requires doing it right. You don’t amend in just three days what’s taken years and years to develop.”