Chemical Warfare : Man’s Fight to Halt County Spraying in Yard Goes to Council

A decade-long environmental fight between a Thousand Oaks resident and the county Flood Control District will be reviewed by the Thousand Oaks City Council tonight--with city intervention a possibility.

The Flood Control District lined the stream in Jim Nichols’ back yard in Thousand Oaks with concrete and began spraying the vegetation around the stream bed with herbicides in 1983.

Nichols has been protesting ever since, peppering everyone from former First Lady Barbara Bush to U. S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) with letters asking that the spraying be stopped and the stream bed be allowed to return to its natural state.

Acting on the repeated requests of Nichols, the city’s Planning Commission has developed a report outlining both sides of the issue to be presented at tonight’s City Council meeting.

Based on that report, officials say, the council may choose to ask the flood district to make a presentation outlining its herbicide use in the stream bed or could order an outside study to investigate the effects on animals and humans. A third option--the one that Nichols expects--is to take no action at all.

The Flood Control District maintains that the herbicide, known as Rodeo, kills only the plants on which it is sprayed. The district sprays three to four times a year to keep the flood channel clear and has permits from the California Fish and Game Department to do so. In addition, the federal Environmental Protection Agency approves the use of Rodeo near water-carrying regions.

But for Nichols, that reassurance isn’t enough. A devoted gardener, he says he has seen bad effects on his fruit trees, mainly on their ability to fight off such parasites as aphids and whiteflies. He believes that the destruction of the plant life along the stream bed is to blame, saying a whole world of beneficial insects that would normally eat the parasites has been eliminated.

His biggest concern, however, is for his two youngest children, Jimmy, 12, and Hilary, 9, who find the stream bed an irresistible attraction.

“I don’t let them play here,” he said, walking next to the greenish trickle running through the cement channel. “But kids don’t always do what they’re told.”

He also fears that the herbicide may become wind-borne immediately after it is sprayed. He blames at least one fruitless harvest of an almond tree near the stream on airborne toxins.

Nichols, a lighting technician in the film industry, has lived on the same Hillman Drive property overlooking the Castano tributary channel for 18 years.

His first problem with the Flood Control District’s actions were cosmetic. He hated to see the spring that feeds the stream altered. Poking around there over the years, he has found fossils, including a whale’s rib, which he believes to be millions of years old.

But when the spraying started, his concerns deepened.

“I called up the county and asked, ‘Hey, how come everything is dead along the stream bed?’ ” he said.

Eventually the county sent him a letter enclosing information about the herbicides Rodeo, Round-up and Oust, all manufactured by Monsanto. Alex Sheydayi, deputy director of the Flood Control District, said only Rodeo, which is approved for use near streams, is used in the flood channel behind Nichols’ house.

Nichols said he doesn’t believe that the county thoroughly examined the environmental impact of the herbicide before using it. He said the manufacturer told him that the herbicide may have a suffocating effect on fish. He believes that it has driven away other wildlife as well.

“The wildlife has disappeared,” he said. “I don’t think that would have happened if they’d done a proper environmental impact report.”

Arthur Goulet, director of the county’s Department of Public Works, said the concerns of Nichols are unfounded.

“Of course, we don’t agree with him,” Goulet said. “We use only herbicides approved by the state of California, and we follow all the rules scrupulously. We’re not going to create a situation where we leave behind toxic materials.”

“He’s very strident about his feelings,” Greg Smith, the Thousand Oaks city planner who prepared the report for the City Council, said of Nichols. “But he’s a concerned citizen.”

Nichols knows that he is not popular with local officials. Other area residents have complained to the Flood Control District about the channel, but none so vehemently.

Goulet said the county’s maintenance crews hold Nichols responsible for the glue they have found in their gate locks and upturned nails placed on maintenance roads near the stream bed. Nichols denies it.

“I’ve been told they have a dossier on me as an environmental radical, which is fine by me,” he said.

Sheydayi said the department has tried to make concessions to Nichols over the years, including telling him that he could try to control the vegetation on the stream bed near his home himself. But that didn’t work out to the county’s satisfaction, he said.

Smith said the Planning Commission’s report gives background on both sides of the issue, but makes no specific recommendations to the City Council.

“We’ve indicated that if they wish to consider this further, perhaps what they should do is invite the flood district to make a presentation,” he said. “After exhausting those possibilities, they may want to hire an outside expert to consult. We’re not experts in this field.”

But Smith expressed some doubts about Nichols’ concerns, pointing to the lack of scientific evidence that the herbicide is bad for humans and wildlife.

“There should be published scientific papers and documents, and there just aren’t,” he said.

Despite the lack of scientific proof, Nichols trudges on, trusting in what his orange trees tell him and scolding his children for going near the stream. His notebook of correspondence keeps getting thicker.

“I’ve been addressing everybody I can think of,” he said. “And all I can get from them are polite thank-you notes.”

He isn’t placing much faith in the results of tonight’s meeting.

“I’ll probably just get another thank-you letter,” he said.