GOP Backers of Pesticide Win Democratic Allies

Key farm-area Democrats in the state Senate are poised this week to join Republicans in pushing through legislation allowing continued use of the pesticide methyl bromide.

Supporters say that, at the initial Senate committee hearing today and in a showdown later on the Senate floor, enough Democrats are positioned to help Republicans win passage of bills allowing the use of the highly toxic gas at least until the end of 1997.

Majority Republicans in the Assembly last week easily won passage of a pro-methyl bromide measure, but faced a seemingly tougher sell in the Democratic-dominated Senate.

Similar legislation died in a Senate committee last year, prompting Gov. Pete Wilson to call a special legislative session for this year during which lawmakers will try again to head off a March 31 deadline on use of the chemical. At issue is whether to extend use of the pesticide for another two years to allow state officials to continue evaluating health risk studies.

New bills waiving the deadline come up today before the same panel, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, but this time the result will be different, according to a Democratic supporter, state Sen. Patrick Johnston of Stockton.

Pointing out that state Sen. Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) helped kill pro-methyl bromide legislation before the health committee last September by withholding a deciding vote, Johnston noted that Mello now heads efforts to secure passage. Mello is the author of the major bill to extend the methyl bromide deadline. He was unavailable for comment.

“With Sen. Mello’s vote, a majority of the committee will pass the bill after a long and contentious hearing,” Johnston predicted in an interview.

The Central Valley senator said the chemical is crucial to California farmers who “need the extension to keep parity with other states,” and, in his district, to the growers of San Joaquin County’s $76-million strawberry crop.

As for health risks, Johnston said, “important safety procedures make a dangerous chemical unlikely to cause injury.”

Besides Mello and Johnston, two other Senate Democrats are on record in favor of the Mello bill, Jim Costa of Fresno and Mike Thompson of St. Helena.

“Methyl bromide is vital to our economy and crucial to our ability to compete in the world market,” Costa said Tuesday.

Said Thompson: “While we need to be looking for and using alternatives, right now it would be shortsighted if we were the only spot in the world where it wasn’t used.”

Environmentalists who strongly disagree that the chemical is safe nevertheless concede that the proposed legislation will pass, probably quickly, giving new life to legal use of methyl bromide. Farmers gas soil to kill off underground life before planting a variety of crops, accounting for 80% to 90% of the pesticide use. The remainder is used to fumigate harvested crops for shipping and in homes as a termite killer.

Driving the resolve to keep methyl bromide on the market have been Wilson administration estimates of financial disaster costing the state’s farm economy hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs if the pesticide is discontinued.

Although federal regulations call for a ban on the pesticide by 2001 and it is not used heavily in most states, California will be the first state to ban the chemical unless the Legislature acts on the extension.

Republicans have responded as one, seizing an issue they believe in fervently and have the votes to win. GOP backers, while portraying the chemical as an economic mainstay of California’s $20-billion farm economy, have downplayed its potential environmental and health risks.

Assembly Republicans pushing for the proposed legislation showed little sympathy for opponents’ arguments during recent lower house debates.

Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico), repeating a theme the GOP has hammered on, said health risks posed by the chemical are reduced or eliminated by careful handling of the substance under state and county supervision.

As for arguments raised by scientists, environmentalists and people claiming injury from exposure to methyl bromide, Richter repeatedly declared that “making a statement does not make it so.” As with any widely used but potentially dangerous substance, Richter said, “we need some proportionality in our thinking.” Life, he said, “is full of risks.”

As for suggestions that alternatives exist to the 7,000 tons of methyl bromide used annually in California, Richter said flatly, “There are no alternatives.” If there were, Richter and other proponents said, farmers would stop using methyl bromide because it is expensive, running as much as $1,200 to $1,500 an acre.

Richter is only one of many Republicans who have taken the offensive on the issue.

Assemblyman Jim Morrissey (R-Santa Ana), responding to testimony describing danger to the Earth’s protective ozone layer, said, “I understand that’s just a theory.”

Over the years, said Assemblyman Charles Poochigian (R-Fresno), the methyl bromide issue “has been debated in eight different committees by now and [lawmakers] are well aware of all the arguments.”

The chemical came under scrutiny and testing in 1984, and an extension on testing was granted in 1991.

Opponents, meanwhile, even in the face of defeat, continue to argue their case.

Members of the California League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group, promise to produce witnesses at Senate hearings who they claim will show that health risk studies of methyl bromide “have been withheld from the public” and that state reports on the pesticide’s economic effects are “wildly exaggerated.” In addition, the group says it will show that buffer zones between gassed fields and homes and schools are too small to protect residents.