The fall of a pesticide policeman
Zamora stopped and plucked some of the cherries. Laboratory analysis confirmed his suspicions. They bore traces of the spray, prompting state officials to place a rare quarantine on the crop. Rather than go to market, $70,000 in cherries was left to rot last summer.
This would be one of the last investigations in Zamora's tumultuous five years as a state Department of Agriculture inspector. During that time, he tackled dozens of cases involving sprays that drifted onto people, school grounds — or, in the case of cherries — the wrong crop.
His hard-nosed approach repeatedly incurred the wrath of growers, who tagged him as a crusader, a man who overstated risks, jumped to conclusions and sometimes entered private property without proper permission. His actions even provoked several threats of bodily harm.
Spurred by grower complaints, Zamora's bosses last fall hired a private investigator to check his performance, while placing him in a new job away from the fields and orchards. No allegations of misconduct were ever substantiated by the investigation. But rather than vindicating him, the state Department of Agriculture — citing concerns about Zamora's safety — has declined to let him return to his old job.
Zamora's troubled tenure provides a window into the state's efforts to safeguard human health and the environment as farm chemicals are sprayed in the spring and summer across Washington's farmlands.
In recent years, these lands have annually produced more than $3 billion worth of products. The Department of Agriculture is responsible under state law to assist farmers in moving those crops into global markets.
The state agency also is responsible for enforcing federal pesticide regulations. The agency has 13 inspectors who annually may tackle more than 200 investigations and also get involved in inspections and other work.
For farmers, the timely use of chemical sprays can mean the difference between a banner year or a bust. And many farmers have been riled by state Department of Agriculture fines, which come from an agency they think should be more of an ally.
Their concerns prompted the Legislature in 1995 to pass a law requiring "letters of correction" rather than fines for many first-time violators.
The legislation reflected the cooperative relationship that farmers sought with pesticide regulators. And the complaints against Zamora reflect, at least in part, fears that he was undermining that relationship.
"The Department of Agriculture wants to have a good working relationship with the farmers, and maybe they are in a little bit of a bind because they do have to regulate the industry," said state Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee. "But they have always tried to do that in a positive matter. And we saw that slipping away [with Zamora]. That's what concerned us."
David Mathison of Stemilt Management, which tends orchards across Eastern Washington and joined in the campaign against Zamora, said: "We were out to make a statement that they [the Department of Agriculture] need to be helpful to growers. They need to have an educational approach instead of an enforcement, FBI-undercover-kind-of-guy-looking-through-the-bushes approach."
But farmworker advocates and environmental groups repeatedly have faulted the agency for failing to do more to protect human health, fish and wildlife.
A 1998 audit by the Environmental Protection Agency found those concerns had merit. The audit concluded that the state did not always thoroughly investigate complaints of illegal spray affecting human health; some investigations appeared to be prematurely terminated; and enforcement actions were on the decline as the agency often "favored technical assistance" over fines. The audit also contained a list of recommended actions to improve enforcement.
Zamora, 54, went to work for the agency a few months after the audit. Over time, he came to share the concerns about lackluster enforcement, telling his bosses the agency didn't do enough to protect schoolchildren, farmworkers and others from spray drift.
Zamora's efforts helped boost the agency's yearly enforcement actions. In 1998, the department issued nine violation notices and $10,310 in fines. By 2002, the latest year for which annual statistics have been compiled, the agency issued more than 50 violation notices and more than $50,000 in fines.
Zamora summarized his approach to his job in testimony before the state House Government Affairs Committee in 2002: "I don't have a problem with pesticides," said Zamora, who is now under orders by his bosses not to talk with the press. "I do have a problem with pesticides that are not used safely and legally. And that has been the whole theme of my effort in the job that I do. To promote their safe and legal use."
Environmental and farmworker groups are frustrated by his agency's refusal to keep him in the field.
"This raises serious questions about whether the agency is up to doing the job," said Carol Dansereau of the Seattle-based Farm Worker Pesticide Project.
Zamora's job transfer also has been monitored by the Washington chapter of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Washington Public Employees Association.
"The input I have received from fellow inspectors — they were devastated," said Lyle Loncosty, an official at the state workers union. "The perception was that ... if you got yourself crossways with the growers — even if you are 100 percent right — don't rely on the agency to give you backing."
Earlier this year, Zamora — through a nomination process from colleagues — earned recognition as one of 50 "employees of the year" among the department's more than 600 full- and part-time employees.
State agriculture officials say their decision to transfer Zamora does not mean they're backing down on enforcement.
"We are aware that those perceptions are out there ... that we caved in," said Agriculture Department assistant director Bob Arrington. "I don't agree with those perceptions. But I can't make them go away."
A varied background
When Zamora landed at the Agriculture Department, his résumé offered no hint of a man bent on rocking the boat. Raised in Eastern Oregon, where pesticides are a part of farm life, Zamora later earned a doctorate in plant science from the University of Idaho. He worked for American Cyanamid, a major pesticide manufacturer, and then as an extension specialist for Montana State University before taking his state position in Wenatchee.
The irrigated orchards in and around Wenatchee help produce a statewide apple crop topping $1 billion. Increasingly, though, farmers have new neighbors: Housing tracts, schools, retirement homes and day-care centers are encroaching on orchard land.
And in recent years, as growers have struggled amid global competition, the orchards across the state have shrunk from a 1999 peak of 172,000 acres to 164,000 acres in 2002.
During the growing season, orchards are sprayed repeatedly. Two classes of nerve poisons — organophosphates and carbamates — are often used to kill insects that can otherwise devastate crops.
These chemicals break down rapidly, but recent studies show that traces of them are found in the urine of farmworkers and their children. And there is increasing concern about the effects of chronic low-level exposure on children and the unborn. The insecticides are typically applied by air-blast sprayers, which are towed behind a tractor and use powerful fans to kick up plumes of toxic mist, which may drift for hundreds of feet.
State law makes it illegal for such drift to come in contact with humans. But no buffer is required between orchards and development to prevent such contact, and there's no law requiring farmers to alert neighbors before spraying.
At County Castle Day Care Center in Wenatchee, for example, orchards begin less than 100 feet from the children's play area. So on spray days, the day-care providers keep children inside, shutting windows and turning off air conditioners.
"But we realize that is part of living in the Wenatchee Valley," said Jennifer Peters, who works at the center. "I grew up around the orchards, and I'm used to all this. We have to make compromises." A survey Zamora undertook in 2000 found that nearly 40 schools in Chelan, Douglas, Grant and Okanogan counties are within 100 feet of orchard and cropland. And over the past half-decade, the state has investigated at least a half-dozen cases of drift onto school grounds.
Zamora's son attended one of those schools, Wenatchee's Sunnyslope Elementary. Its playground is about 60 feet from an orchard's edge. On March 20, 2000, pesticides drifted onto the playground, with Zamora's son reporting he felt mist on his arms, according to state records.
Zamora arrived at the school that afternoon, detecting a strong pesticide odor and taking swab and grass samples in the play area. An analysis indicated it was the organophosphate chlorpyrifos. Zamora asked Mark Goveia, the principal, to file a complaint, a move that would trigger a state investigation. Goveia refused.
In a later interview, Goveia said he had no personal knowledge of the drift, and "at that time, I didn't feel like it was my responsibility to issue the complaint."
So, Zamora, acting as a private citizen, filed a complaint to his own department. The subsequent investigation, conducted by Zamora's colleague Ed Von Grey, documented drift of the chlorpyrifos.
A year later, another investigation by Von Grey documented drift of another organophosphate, Guthion, from an apple orchard onto a running track in use at the time by Wenatchee-area middle-school students.
Sixth-grader Elena Dominguez was rushed to the hospital in what state health officials classify as a "probable" case of pesticide exposure.
"She was in stupor, in and out of consciousness," said Elena's mother, Cindy Dominguez, who has filed a notice of intent to sue the Wenatchee School District. "I said, 'Elena, talk to me,' and her eyes would roll back, and her head would fall backward."
Her daughter since has recovered.
The two incidents spurred Zamora to try to improve the school defenses against pesticide drift. Agency officials did not consider this work to be part of Zamora's job description. So Zamora launched his campaign as a private citizen. But without the backing of his agency, Zamora found himself on a one-man campaign that made school officials uneasy.
Zamora was able to persuade the Wenatchee School District to plant a border of poplar trees at Sunnyslope Elementary to help catch drift, but he failed to get it to use sampling kits to monitor for pesticides.
"The monitoring is something that we need direction on how we should do it from the state level," said Brian Flones, Wenatchee School District superintendent. "The Department of Ag — we need to follow their lead."
The tipping point
The tipping point came during the 2003 growing season as Zamora tackled the cherry drift and a second controversial investigation involving pesticide drift from one crop to another, where the sprays were not authorized.
The investigations posed big risks to growers, since they could result not only in fines but state-ordered quarantines, such as the 2003 order that barred the cherries from market.
That action prompted the grower — John Riedel — to recently file a civil lawsuit that names the state Department of Agriculture and Zamora as defendants.
The second drift investigation involved Stemilt Management, the large Wenatchee-based orchard operator that prides itself on minimal use of pesticides and markets its fruit under a "responsible choice" label.
The chemical the company had used was a low-toxicity alternative to organophosphates, but it was not certified for use on cherry trees. During the investigation, Stemilt alleged — among other things — that Zamora entered its property without permission and then took samples "in clear violation of department policy," according to a Washington Farm Bureau complaint sent to the state as part of a broader listing of complaints against the inspector.
"It is unfortunate that we are again dealing with the over-zealous behavior of one Washington state Department of Agriculture employee who is generating a high degree of frustration, fear and anger among growers," state Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, wrote in a July 16 letter to the state.
"The smaller growers have been under considerable financial pressure for the past several years. When these people's livelihoods are held at risk, some very strong feelings rise to the surface immediately!"
By September, state officials had suspended Zamora from his inspection beat. They then hired G/T Investigations of Spokane to review his actions. The company conducted more than 50 interviews in compiling a report.
State officials said that investigation turned up insufficient evidence to substantiate any misconduct on the part of Zamora, according to a Dec. 31, 2003, letter by Agriculture Department assistant director Arrington to the Washington Farm Bureau.
But Arrington said the report, which the state has declined to publicly release, did identify an area of departmental procedure that "needs clarification and guidance." That area — known as right of entry — covered the sensitive topic of how inspectors entered onto private land. And, after the letter, the Washington Farm Bureau worked with state officials to "clean up that policy," according to Dean Boyer, a Farm Bureau spokesman.
Under the new policy, inspectors must not only ask for consent to enter private property but also inform all landowners that they have a right to refuse their entry. If denied, inspectors can then go to court to gain a warrant, but the policy says such authority will be used only under "unusual circumstances," language that has concerned farmworker advocates. But Arrington says inspectors will not back off enforcement and will seek the court warrants if needed to gain entry.
This year, the state's inspection efforts have continued without Zamora. Though still based in Wenatchee, he now helps schools comply with a 2002 state law that requires that parents be informed before any pesticide spraying by school staff members of grounds or buildings.
However, the law does not require growers near schools or day-care centers to provide any such warning before they spray nearby crops.
Arrington says the new assignment is important, and that Zamora is doing an excellent job.
Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com
