The tomatoes are coming! The tomatoes are coming!
So far, only one person has had sufficient sense to actually
test whether perchlorate-tainted water will express itself in the
crops grown with that tainted water.
The tomatoes are coming! The tomatoes are coming!
So far, only one person has had sufficient sense to actually test whether perchlorate-tainted water will express itself in the crops grown with that tainted water. You’d think that this would be a first step, or at least a concurrent step, undertaken by the state, the feds, and the local entities who are trying to figure out what to do about Olin’s mess that they left here for the South County.
Bob Cerruti of San Martin has a well that’s contaminated with perchlorates, so he took it upon himself to grow some tomatoes to see just how high the contamination levels might be. His experiment might not follow the most rigid of scientific methods, but so what? If your family, pets, and farm animals were drinking this water, or just bathing in it, wouldn’t you want to know what it does? If you’re a farmer, wouldn’t you be mildly concerned about finding yourself in big trouble over selling your crops because our overzealous feds might hammer you for selling “poisoned food” as defined by their “anti-bioterrorism” laws? If you don’t think this could happen, look at the grief that Goldsmith Seeds people have had to deal with just because they inadvertently passed some infected plants to their customers.
Here’s what I believe is the big point about all this, raised in Friday’s Dispatch regarding Olin’s newly proposed method for leaching the perchlorate-tainted soil instead of digging it up:
“Many people worry that negative results from tests like Cerrutis will make Santa Clara County agriculture less desirable, even though crops outside the region are perchlorate-tainted, too.”
When I read it, I thought, “Ah, so it’s better to bury your head in the sand or to try covering it all up.”
People are concerned that if Mr. Cerruti’s results, however accurate or inaccurate, get out, it could have a tremendous negative impact on local agriculture. As I said, if the fed, state, and local agencies had done similar studies, except under rigid conditions, right away, they’d have accurate results, and if the perchlorate residue in the crops turned out to be unacceptably high, then it’s something that would have to be addressed. Yeah, this would be bad for local farmers.
However, when I last checked, farmers are like other consumers, and they actually eat food. If the food – lettuce, tomatoes, or anything else – is chock full of a chemical that might be bad for people, then you can’t just sell the stuff all over the place and hope nobody finds out that it’s tainted. And in the absence of solid data, outsiders don’t know if the produce they buy is growing in water that’s a little bit high in some ingredients or dredged from something like Love Canal.
Straightening out this mess is going to take a long time, and it isn’t going to be pretty for the people in the South Valley. I’m also pessimistic about how any government agency will resolve this. If history is any guide, I see two undesirable yet likely outcomes: (1) The feds decide to blanket Olin as a defense contractor (they probably do something for the feds, even if it isn’t here), and thereby hold them blameless for pollution, or (2) Olin declares bankruptcy the way Johns-Manville did when they were confronted with loads of claims from employees (and survivors of dead employees) over J-M’s use of asbestos without telling their employees they knew it was bad for them.
One guy with a backyard tomato experiment may be nothing more than the proverbial canary in the coal mine. And while a canary may not be an accurate way to test for exact levels of poison gas in a mine, if the canary drops over dead, it’s a pretty good indicator, with or without supporting data. A tomato that’s off-the-scale high in perchlorates is going to be just an indicator, regardless of whether the state or feds or anyone else can agree on whether 4 parts per billion or 6 parts per billion are acceptable levels.
If I were a local farmer whose crops (and therefore, their livelihood) depend on well water, I’d be launching lawsuits against almost everyone in sight, just as a pre-emptive strike. Their butts truly are on the line here. We can drink bottled water if need be, but it’s hopelessly expensive and difficult to bring in enough outside water to irrigate hundreds and thousands of acres of crops or to undo lots of bad publicity to outside produce buyers. And while I’m no fan of tying up the courts or enriching the lawyers, somehow I suspect the government and Olin will find ways to get themselves off the hook for responsibility, or drag their heels when it comes to finding real solutions and real public health baselines for perchlorates.
