Growers Fight School Site by Farmland

Children and teachers would be exposed to dangerous pesticides if officials carry out plans to build a new school amid fields of strawberry, lettuce and pepper crops, local farmers say.

The proposal has infuriated longtime farmers who live near the 14-acre site in southeast Oxnard between Rice and Rose avenues.

Besides their concerns for the health of students and teachers, the growers fear a threat of litigation should someone fall ill, and they worry the conflict could someday force them to scale back farming in the area.

Frederick Rosenmund grows mostly strawberries on 120 acres directly east of the proposed school site. Wearing full protective gear, his crew injects his fields with the highly toxic fumigant methyl bromide during summer months.

Third-generation farmer Joe Maulhardt owns 123 acres bordering the proposed site on the north. The farmer, who leases most of his property to other farmers, uses methyl bromide when he grows strawberries during the winter.

“Maulhardt does winter strawberries, we do summer strawberries--so the children would be exposed all year round,” Rosenmund said.

Maulhardt, whose family has owned the property for 112 years, worries the school would be the beginning of the end for his business. “Development is coming, and eventually they’re going to take over my place too,” he said.

Other crops on both farms are heavily sprayed, sometimes by air, with additional pesticides, herbicides and fumigants.

Rosenmund, who also practices law, has hired an attorney and plans to sue the Oxnard Elementary School District if the plan goes forward.

“It would be unconscionable to build a school in close proximity to the regular application of these toxic materials,” wrote Richard Tentler, Rosenmund’s Oxnard attorney, in a letter to district trustees. “It would subject school children to exposure and toxic poisoning.”

District officials say they are following the letter of state and federal laws in moving forward with the plan. In mid-May, trustees approved an early draft of a report that deemed the site environmentally safe.

They are expected to adopt the report’s final draft and take steps to purchase the land this summer. Rosenmund said he will challenge the adequacy of the report in court.

Officials stress the urgency in opening a new campus.

The elementary school district, the largest in the county, serves more than 14,600 students. Officials expect enrollment to grow by 700 by the fall of 1999.

In order to accommodate growing enrollment and a new class-size reduction mandate from the state, the district must open two new campuses within five years, officials said.

Existing campuses are already saturated with portable classrooms, said Assistant Supt. Sandra Herrera. Last June, residents approved a $57-million bond that will, in part, cover the cost of the schools.

Officials considered several other sites for their 20th campus, which they plan to call Juan Laguna Soria Elementary School.

They chose the parcel east of Rice Avenue, now being used to grow sod, for many reasons: It is flat, electrical utilities are available at the nearby residential neighborhood, and the property is already identified in the city’s land-use plan for school use.

Herrera said no law prohibits schools from being built near fields regularly sprayed with pesticides--as long as safeguards are in place. In fact, she noted, the district has already opened two schools near farmland.

Neither Frank Intermediate School nor Brekke Elementary School has experienced adverse effects, she said.

At those schools, farmers notify principals each time they plan to spray methyl bromide. This procedure is required by the county agricultural commissioner. Then they keep students at least 50 yards from fields for at least 24 hours after treatment.

“A week before he treats his crops, he visits me personally,” said Peter Nichols, principal of Frank School. “He always does it on a Friday and never starts until an hour and a half after the children are dismissed.”

Also, there is a 200-foot to 800-foot buffer zone between the schools and fields. Such would be the case at Juan Soria, officials said.

“We’re told that [the pesticide] dissipates in the air over the weekend and is gone by the time the children return,” Herrera said. “A school district can’t change the laws when it comes to pesticides.”

But Marion Moses, a physician who also works with the nonprofit Pesticide Education Center in San Francisco, said federal pesticide laws are weak. The laws would be easier to strengthen if children experienced immediate and obvious symptoms after exposure, she said.

But it can take years for people to develop chronic illnesses, such as cancer and leukemia, after pesticide exposure, she said. Children who often play outdoors in schools are particularly vulnerable, she said.

One Oxnard school trustee, the only board member to oppose the selected site, agrees. “We don’t know what it’s going to cause in terms of physical problems 10 or 15 years from now,” said Mary Barreto. “The school district is potentially liable.”

Recently, teachers in the Rio School District have broken their years of silence and are publicly protesting what they see as pesticide poisoning after routine spraying near their campuses.

Teachers have blamed a host of health problems, from headaches to asthma, on the fumigants and pesticides.

Moses said the only solution is to halt the use of harmful pesticides and turn to organic farming.

Although a proposed federal law would ban the manufacturing of methyl bromide by 2001, Moses fears the law will ultimately be delayed or thrown out altogether.

She said parents should not have to worry about their children being exposed to harmful chemicals at school.

“You have a concentration of very young children who are being exposed to toxic chemicals,” she said. “We’re supposed to be protecting these children, not poisoning them.”