Pesticide Foes Seek Ouster of McPhail

Claiming to represent more than a dozen environmental groups, four anti-pesticide advocates Tuesday implored Ventura County supervisors to remove the county’s agricultural chief.

“Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail has failed in his duties to protect public health,” Mary Haffner of Community and Children’s Advocates Against Pesticide Poisoning, based in Ventura, told supervisors. “We are concerned about the 20-year history of failure on his part to make necessary lasting changes in his department in order to protect the public as well as agriculture in Ventura County.”

The request comes at a time when the 52-year-old commissioner is fighting to save the job he has held for two decades. When McPhail’s term expired in January, the Board of Supervisors placed him on six-month probation.

They did so after a performance review determined that McPhail failed to keep supervisors informed about crucial farmland issues and criticized him for allegedly dragging his feet in seeking disaster relief funds for farmers after the winter freeze.

A few weeks after being placed on probation, McPhail was assailed again, this time from state Department of Pesticide Regulation, which claimed that the county program under McPhail’s leadership suffers from shoddy investigations, lax enforcement and poor record-keeping of pesticide violations at farms.

Supervisors will decide whether McPhail should be reappointed to his $84,000-a-year post by July.

The anti-pesticide advocates Tuesday claimed to represent, among others, the Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club, the Ventura chapter of the Surfrider Foundation and the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura County.