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A 35-mph wind lifts fungicides directly into Smith
River School (buildings in background).
click on photo for details & larger view
The Smith River enters the Pacific Ocean.
click on photo for details & larger view
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Smith River Project Testing Program
The Smith River Project’s Estuary Enhancement Program empowers citizens
in the area to act on their own behalf and that of their natural home.
For instance, the Smith River Project is testing several domestic wells
for agricultural toxins as a free service to local residents who otherwise
could not afford it. The results have been shocking...
In December 2001, three wells tested by the Smith River Project showed
high concentrations of 1,2-D, an agricultural chemical known to the state
and federal governments to cause cancer.
The California North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB)
has informed the Smith River Project that their scientists are now
relying on our data, as the state has only allocated $2,000 for its current
water testing program in Smith River.
In essence, we shamed the state into confronting pesticide poisoning
at the mouth of one of the world’s cleanest rivers. And indeed, the
state’s actions — or lack thereof — have been shameful.
Our research showed that RWQCB conducted well testing in Smith River during
the 1980s, found the carcinogens 1,2-D and aldicarb, and then, citing
“budget cuts,” left the area and told no one about the contamination.
For nearly 20 years the state did nothing about what is a serious contamination
issue. None of the long-time residents whose wells we tested last year
had ever been informed of a possible contamination issue, even though
testing done by the state as late as 1996 (at the request of a Smith River
resident) showed 1,2-D persisting in local wells. One elderly couple has
been drinking their contaminated water for two decades; ironically, they
also run one of the only organic vegetable farms in all of Del Norte County.
The Estuary Enhancement Program also targets habitat simplification.
Many sloughs and appurtenant streams have been degraded or lost altogether,
resulting in a much smaller zone of reentry for anadromous fishes. Water
levels are often low due to extractions, filling and diking, and former
holes suitable for resting and spawning have been filled, channeled or
cut off by debris from the main river flow. Important tree cover that
keeps water cool and fish hidden has been all but eliminated. Gravel mining
is disrupting the river’s course, clarity and water levels.
Who’s Most At Risk?
Pesticides affect everyone, but children and the elderly are particularly
at risk. Recently a Smith River Project staff member witnessed and
photographed a lily grower spraying two highly toxic fungicides,
Kocide and Daconil, into a 35-mph wind blowing directly into the
280-student elementary school in the town of Smith River. Spraying
occurred within 20 feet of school grounds, a routine event made
unusual only by having been caught on film. Daconil is a trade name
for chlorothalonil, which, according to Pesticide Action Network research,
"is able to travel in the air a significant distance and has
been found almost a mile from the farmland where it was applied
and has been documented in residential neighborhoods in California.”
Daconil is identified by U.S. EPA as "a probable human cancer
causing agent” and is contaminated with hexachlorobenzene,
a known carcinogen. Its toxicity is heightened when exposure occurs
through inhalation. Kocide (copper hydroxide) causes burning in
the chest and abdomen, intense nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache,
sweating and shock. It is also extremely hazardous to fish.
Such high winds often blow in from the coast, across lily fields
and into the town of Smith River. Since lily growers routinely spray
into such stiff winds, virtually the entire population
(2,500) of Smith River, as well as birds, fish and wildlife, face
a significant risk of pesticide poisoning.
For more detail about the chemicals used in the Smith River Estuary,
check out our Fact
Sheet #1, Chemicals Used in the Estuary.
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What’s So Important About the Estuary?
On the Smith River Plain farmers produce nearly 90 percent of the U.S.
lily bulbs, a petrochemical-intensive venture that, even more than the
widespread use of dikes, ditches and levees that shrink the Estuary’s
wetland area, threatens this irreplaceable habitat.
The estuary is a river’s most fragile and vulnerable reach, a critically
important cradle of life located where freshwater systems meet salt, and
where the terrestrial meets the ocean. More species require estuarine
habitat for some portion of their life cycle than any other type of habitat
on Earth, yet estuaries are also among the most abused places on the planet.
The mouth of a river is where creatures move in, all the way to the headwaters
in the case of the Smith River — now the only California river to
allow such migration. Marine estuaries are the single most diverse biotic
habitats in the world. They are breeding and rearing habitat for thousands
of creatures from the micro- to macroscopic. The entire length of a river
— even one whose upper reaches, like the Smith’s, are mostly
unspoiled — is vulnerable to practices that damage the mouth. Species
protected under state and federal Endangered Species laws that depend
upon the Smith River Estuary include coho and Chinook salmon, tidewater
goby, bald eagle, brown pelican, marbled murrelet,and snowy plover.
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New! Click
Here for Testing Program Update
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