GILROY
– In one sense, the discovery of perchlorate in groundwater from
Morgan Hill to Gilroy has been a boon for some local farmers. It
has saved them thousands of dollars a year on bottled water for
their field workers.
GILROY – In one sense, the discovery of perchlorate in groundwater from Morgan Hill to Gilroy has been a boon for some local farmers. It has saved them thousands of dollars a year on bottled water for their field workers.
“Before the perchlorate thing came in, we were providing bottled water to our workers,” said Jeannie Lopez, office manager for Uesugi Farms. “With good agricultural practices, you are required to know where your water comes from.”
Uesugi Farms now receives bottled water from the perchlorate polluter – the Connecticut-based Olin Corporation – for its farms in San Martin, where it grows bell peppers and other crops. The farm’s headquarters is between Hollister and Gilroy on state Highway 25.
LJB Farms in San Martin also gets bottled water from Olin for its workers, both in the fields and at their residential camps. LJB’s and Uesugi’s wells, like roughly 400 others in the South Valley, have tested positive for perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel and flares that is known to cause thyroid gland problems, especially in children and pregnant women.
The wells at George Chiala Farms in Morgan Hill tested negative, but the Chiala family buys bottled water anyway for its workers, according to manager Tim Chiala, George’s son. This cost the farm $10,938 in 2003, according to Chiala Farms accountant Nenita Tan.
“It would be great” if Olin would cover this expense, Tim Chiala said – but his wells would have to test positive for perchlorate first.
California industrial law requires growers to provide potable drinking water for their employees (General Industry Safety Orders, Article 13, Subsection 3457). To be on the safe side, many farm owners, especially larger ones, buy bottled water whether their well water is known to be polluted or not.
Olin gives bottled water free of charge to hundreds of homes, businesses and institutions whose water tests positive for more than 2 ppb of perchlorate – although Olin will stop if the well does not test above 4 ppb (California’s “action level”) in subsequent tests.
Before the spring farm labor season begins in earnest, the Santa Clara Valley Water District is trying to spread the word in the agricultural community that Olin will provide bottled water free of charge for farm workers.
“It won’t be hard to get the word out to the bigger farmers, but there are a lot of smaller farmers, many of whom don’t speak English,” Water District Spokesman Mike DiMarco said Wednesday.
The latter often have little contact with public- and private-sector networks such as the Santa Clara County Department of Agriculture and the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau, so telling them about the bottled water presents a challenge. Since many such growers are in the cut flower industry, Water District officials may work via groups such as the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Growers Association.
To help with the outreach, the Water District has enlisted help from the Farm Bureau and the county Ag Department.
“We’re definitely going to help them with that,” said Jenny Midtgaard Derry, the Farm Bureau’s executive director. She said she would put a notice in her Friday e-mail report to farmers and in her agency’s newsletter, Farm Bureau Impact.
“Farm workers have already been getting bottled water if they were in any danger of perchlorate,” Midtgaard Derry said, “but this will take the burden of providing that off the farmers and put it onto Olin, which is a good thing.”
Ag Department Director Greg Van Wassenhove said, “I know that in the early stages of the perchlorate situation, that the growers were made aware of that bottled water option, but Mike (DiMarco) in his e-mail to me said, what about farm-labor contractors? What about small, specialty farms? That’s an area that I think we could get could get the word out even farther. … I think it’s great that that would take the cost off the producers.”
It was Olin’s road flare plant in Morgan Hill that, between 1955 and 1996, dumped the perchlorate that now pollutes groundwater in at least a nine-mile plume. Olin spokespeople did not return phone calls.
DiMarco said farm workers initially slipped through the cracks of his agency’s concern over perchlorate. The spark of awareness for Water District officials came last summer at a Spanish-language public meeting on the contamination, held at the parish hall of Saint Catherine’s Catholic Church in Morgan Hill.
“We just noticed that a lot of the people in the audience were agricultural workers,” DiMarco said, “and an ‘a-ha’ just went off in our heads. (We thought) ‘How many of these farm workers are receiving bottled water?’ ”
The Water District is urging farmers who haven’t had their wells tested to do so as soon as possible. Olin will test free of charge, or one of several local labs could do the job. For more information, call the Water District at 265-2607.
Lopez said the Water District’s outreach may not be very effective.
“Most anyone who has a labor camp has already been contacted by Olin a long, long time ago,” the Uesugi Farms official said. “Olin has actually been cooperative as far as I am concerned.”
Lopez said she didn’t know how much money a year Uesugi Farms used to spend on bottled water. For a farm its size, however, she said this cost “would be significant.”
