Fumigation Task Force Cancels First Meeting : Pollution: Group exploring alternatives to using toxic gas at warehouse bogs down over admitting public.

A task force exploring alternatives to using a toxic gas to fumigate fruit at a San Diego warehouse accomplished nothing at its first meeting Thursday. The meeting was canceled amid heated debate over whether it was open.

The issue of regular fumigation of imported fruit with the gas, called methyl bromide, immediately took a back seat to disagreement between task force members and several representatives of the Environmental Health Coalition over whether California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, applies to the task force.

Coalition members had invited several people, including school and air pollution officials, to attend the meeting because they fear the operator of the cold storage facility, at the foot of 10th Avenue, will start fumigating soon.

At issue for the task force is a plan by Tenth Avenue Cold Storage to fumigate mostly Chilean fruit with methyl bromide in a waterfront building the Port District owns. The chemical is used widely as a termite fumigant.

Environmentalists, school officials and residents want the operator to install equipment that will prevent the release of vapors directly into the atmosphere after the fruit is fumigated in a chamber.

In addition to worker safety issues, environmentalists point out that Perkins Elementary School is a quarter of a mile away, and the community of Barrio Logan lies directly downwind.

At the request of port commissioners, a mixture of scientists and community representatives, along with the operator of the cold storage business and the man whose company will provide the fumigation service, was assembled by the Port District staff over the past five months.

The Methyl Bromide Task Force met Thursday to discuss safety, alternative fumigation chemicals and alternatives to venting the vapors into the atmosphere.

But there was a problem in getting discussions started:

“This is not a public meeting; this is a committee meeting, and we want an exchange between (technical experts) and the (Port District) staff,” explained Ralph Hicks, the Port District’s environmental management coordinator and organizer of the task force. “I’m disappointed that some members of the community have publicized this as a public meeting.”

Richard Juarez, who sits on the Environmental Health Coalition’s board of directors and works for a development company interested in building low-cost housing near the 10th Avenue terminal, told Hicks he wasn’t going to leave.

“It sounds like this group is moving to kick everybody out,” Juarez said. “If you’re going to kick me out, you better get a security guard and someone to tell me why.”

“This is California and this (the Brown Act) is the law.”

The meeting was abruptly adjourned on the unseconded motion of Albert Garnier, director of Tenth Avenue Cold Storage. After the meeting, Garnier told Environmental Health Coalition Director Diane Takvorian that, if she is correct in her assertion that the task force meetings are public, “then we (the task force) won’t accomplish anything.”

The operator has cleared all regulatory hurdles, except for a recent decision by Air Pollution Control District that a health risk assessment study must be completed before fumigation can begin.

It was unclear if the task force would meet again.