Group Lists County 4th Statewide in Pesticide Use

Ventura County ranks fourth in the state in the amount of toxic herbicides sprayed along its roadsides, according to a study released Thursday by an environmental group.

The report by Californians for Alternatives to Toxics listed Ventura County behind Los Angeles, Orange and Contra Costa counties as having the highest concentration of chemical weed killers applied per mile by Caltrans and county workers.

“If you got a flat tire or you were a CHP officer and you had to walk onto roadsides all the time, wouldn’t you want to know [about the high herbicide use]?” asked Patty Clary, the group’s executive director.

In Ventura County, herbicides are used along 812 miles of roadway--6,504 gallons of liquid pesticides and an additional 516 pounds of dry pesticides. Per mile, that equals about 8.64 gallons or pounds applied.

The nonprofit research group, which formed 18 years ago to reduce pesticide use in California, released its study Thursday in Sacramento at a news conference attended by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles).

Clary said her group, based in Arcata in Northern California, hopes to persuade Caltrans and public works officials from the state’s 58 counties to curb herbicide usage, especially near roadway bus stops, where a high number of people tend to congregate.

She said she also hopes the results of the study, which took two years to complete, would encourage counties topping the list to use nontoxic alternatives--such as dry steam or corn gluten--to kill weeds.

Clary said her group was particularly alarmed by the amount of toxic herbicides used by the Ventura County Public Works Department. Of the 539 miles of roadway the county maintains, 4,372 gallons of the herbicides diruon and glyphosate are sprayed each year.

“That is an insane amount of toxic herbicides for a relatively small area,” Clary said.

But Arthur Goulet, director of the Public Works Agency, said county crews remove weeds along some of the 539 miles of roadway by mowing and grading. He also said some of the 4,372 gallons of liquid herbicides are from chemical concentrates and are diluted with water.

“The stuff doesn’t get used right out of the can,” he said. “It’s diluted substantially before anything is sprayed.”

Also, he challenged whether the herbicides were indeed toxic.

“We’re told by the manufacturer that the materials can actually be ingested without harm,” Goulet said. “We’re told you can drink it and there would be no harmful effect.”

Goulet questioned the merit of the environmentalists’ report and said it was filled with inaccuracies and hyperbole.

“It was prepared by an organization dedicated to the elimination of pesticides,” Goulet said. “It strikes me as extremely slanted and makes a great number of generalizations. . . . The methods we utilize are tested and supposedly safe, based on our experts’ [opinion].”

Jim Drago, a Caltrans spokesman in Sacramento, said the agency long ago made a pledge to reduce its herbicide usage. In 1992, Caltrans vowed to reduce the amount of chemical weed killers used--50% by 2000 and 80% by 2012.

“In 1993, we used 500,000 [gallons and pounds] of active herbicides,” Drago said. “By 1997, we used 300,000, so we’re on the right path.”

The agency already takes extra care around bus stops, he said, by paving around them so weeds cannot grow.

“We always try to apply common sense in this,” Drago said. “We don’t spray on windy days, and we don’t spray for beautification purposes.”

Deborah Bechtel, a member of the Community of Children’s Advocates Against Pesticide Poisoning, said she wasn’t surprised that Ventura County ranked so high in herbicide usage.

In recent months, she said county crews have twice sprayed along the sidewalks in front of her home.

“They’ve hit the tires of my daughter’s car, they spray all over the place,” said Bechtel, who lives in an unincorporated area called Camarillo Heights. “It’s gotten to the point where I won’t go outside barefooted anymore. It makes me uncomfortable to be in my home and hear a truck going by slowing and spraying. It’s a violation of my rights.”

Bechtel said her countywide group has already complained to the county about the roadside spraying and will step up its lobbying efforts to get the method abolished.

“Absolutely, we will follow through on this,” she said.

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Pesticide Use Statewide

These are counties with the highest concentrations of pesticides sprayed annually per square mile by the state Department of Transportation and county road agencies:

1. Los Angeles

2. Orange

3. Contra Costa

4. Ventura

5. San Joaquin

6. Alameda

7. Sacramento, Santa Clara, Solano

8. Imperial, San Benito, San Mateo

9. Riverside, Stanislaus

10. Amador, Merced, San Diego, Tulare

Source: California for Alternatives to Toxics, an Arcata-based research firm