CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Farm Pesticides: Fear Is in the Air : How the state settles a dispute over alleged health problems in Lompoc could determine the course of similar battles wherever towns and fields meet.

George Rauh--reasonable, if emphatic--is certain that the graceful farm town he calls home has been visited with a plague of agricultural chemicals to blame for ailments ranging from runny noses and hair loss to miscarriages and cancer.

Bob Campbell--reasonable, if defensive--knows in his heart of hearts that there is no problem in this lovely coastal valley, that the pesticides and herbicides he uses do nothing more than guarantee the farm bounty that city folks demand.

The state official who has waded into the murky middle ground, Paul Gosselin, is sure of only one thing, but on this he will bet the farm: Whether or not the chemicals used on crops make us sick, the battle going on in the Lompoc Valley over this elusive issue will probably be played out again in more farm towns in California.

“We’re at the beginning of a new phase of growth in this state,” said Gosselin, assistant director of the Department of Pesticide Regulations. As development increases, rural-urban clashes like the one here in Lompoc “are going to come up more and more, and we’d better be geared up.”

Gosselin has spent the better part of a year trying to figure out if Lompoc really is beset with pesticide-related illness, and if so what to do about it. The state’s conclusion--still to come--and its plan of action could set the pattern for future disputes between farmers and towns from Alturas to San Diego.

Here in Lompoc, where the issue has sparked large community meetings, they just want some facts.

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Lompoc is perhaps best known for the beachfront Vandenberg Air Force base and “Club Fed” prison, a minimum-security facility that has housed the famous and disgraced from Watergate co-conspirator H.R. (Bob) Haldeman and former state Sen. Alan Robbins to ZZZZ Best scamster Barry Minkow.

Chumash Indians got here first, followed in the 19th Century by hopeful farmers who visited this lush spur of land between U.S. 101 and the Pacific Ocean 160 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Flowers became a major crop, but although this month’s Flower Festival is still an institution, the fields of blossoms have shrunk considerably, said deputy agriculture commissioner Joe Karl. Today, the region is a miniature version of the fecund Salinas Valley to the north, with year-round production of lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and celery and a smattering of asparagus.

That is the source of the simmering controversy here. With a greater emphasis on food crops, some contend that more chemicals are being sprayed on fields. And, some residents say, more farm chemicals are drifting over their homes.

Lompoc’s anti-pesticide camp says the region has become a “pollution tunnel,” with the ocean at the widest, western end and the city proper inland, where the rolling, oak-studded hills connect. The city is surrounded by fields, with no buffer between agriculture’s edge and back yard’s beginning.

“The coastal winds sweep along those six miles of agricultural fields right down into the town,” said Joan Clayburgh, director of a statewide environmental group called Pesticide Watch. “There seems to be a strong correspondence between the health effects they’re experiencing [in Lompoc] and the pesticides used on the fields.”

If--and this is a big if--there are any unusual health problems here. Not surprisingly, there is little consensus.

When Rauh, teacher turned activist, moved to Lompoc in 1990, it didn’t take long, he said, for chronic bronchitis to set in. Three years later, after canvassing ailing neighbors, the group Volunteers for a Healthy Valley was born.

Terry Hawkins saw her children’s hair come out in clumps and moved to Santa Barbara. Lana Bonilla blames her Hodgkin’s disease on the chemicals sprayed around her town. Terry Geiselman and her husband, Fred Diaz--she plagued by hair loss and he by the return of childhood asthma--are looking for jobs in the Pacific Northwest.

“I have considered at times having children,” said Geiselman, a chemist who has lived here for three years. “But I told my husband that as long as we lived here, that wouldn’t happen.”

But wait a second, say farmers such as Campbell and Art Hibbits, whose families have tilled the rich Lompoc soil for generations and have lived to speak of it. Where’s the proof--that these problems exist at all and, if they exist, that they are linked to agricultural chemicals?

Pesticide use nearly tripled between 1991 and 1992, the only data on the issue available in Lompoc. But 1992 was a soil fumigant year, which comes around only every three to five years and does not represent regular usage, according to a state report released this spring.

Campbell cites a letter from the Santa Barbara medical director concluding that the region’s childhood cancer data between 1989 and 1992 “revealed a county rate below the state average.” A three-month survey at the end of 1992 showed lower absenteeism and fewer nurse’s office visits at Miguelito School, in the middle of a field, than at La Honda, which is more buffered from farming.

“If there’s any evidence to support illnesses linked to pesticides, we’ll start making changes,” said Campbell, spokesman for a handful of farmers who meet on a regular basis to plot strategy. “But not without any proof.”

But solid answers in instances such as this are very hard to come by, everyone agrees. Even when scientists acknowledged California’s most famous childhood cancer cluster in McFarland in the late 1980s, they could never find out what caused the rash of illnesses.

“Based on our science right now, it takes years and years to find a smoking gun,” said Pesticide Watch’s Clayburgh.

In Lompoc, the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has agreed to train physicians in recognizing and reporting pesticide-related illness, interview residents and put together a database to see if there is a pattern of unusual illness. In the meantime, both sides are angry at the lack of answers and at each other.

Rauh wants an end to aerial spraying and a buffer zone between fields and houses. “We want a gradual reduction throughout the valley in pesticide use,” Rauh said. “It can be done. Our program is not saying to the farmers: Stop it now.”

Campbell wants the whole issue resolved quickly so farmers can get back to normal. “EPA and DPR are nice people, but they’re no friend of agriculture,” he said.

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Meanwhile, Gosselin keeps visiting Lompoc, talking to farmers and residents, holding meetings, putting together a plan the state hopes will work here and the next time this dispute comes up.

The Department of Pesticide Regulations has inventoried pest management practices in the Lompoc Valley. It has applied for--and will probably get--a federal grant to promote integrated pest management practices and organize a local management team.

A community meeting is scheduled for this week to explain to Lompoc civilians what pesticide regulation can and cannot do for them. An air monitoring program is being considered.

“In Lompoc they’ve raised serious concerns that warrant us investigating,” Gosselin said. “Hopefully this will be a statewide pilot for other counties.”