After two years of negotiations, Oregon is poised to adopt controversial new rules to protect farmworkers and their families from pesticides drifting over their homes and living areas.
The proposal addresses safety in cases where labor camps border, or sit within, fields or orchards that will be sprayed.
Rule making has taken two years and been delayed three times, as state regulators try to balance the workers’ safety with costs to their employers.
Both sides are unhappy with the result.
“We’ve gotten harsh criticism of this rule, this rulemaking, this agency, this administrator, from both sides of the issue,” said Michael Wood, administrator of Oregon OSHA. “But I genuinely believe that action on this rule will mean that workers are better protected in the state than they have been, and are better protected in Oregon than they are in the vast majority of the country.”
In 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency updated its farmworker protection rules for the first time in a quarter century, and required states to meet or exceed them.
Among the provisions is a requirement that pesticides may not be applied if a worker or other person is within 100 feet, to protect against accidental drift.
That means farmworker families living within 100 feet of fields or orchards would have to be evacuated during spraying.
“The growers came to us and said it’s really going to be disruptive to our workers if we’re spraying early in the morning. They were concerned about several times a year rousting their workers out of housing,” Wood said.
Oregon proposed a compliance alternative that would allow farmworker families to “shelter in place” in their homes with doors and windows closed and heating-cooling systems turned off until 15 minute after the spraying is complete.
But farmworker advocates protested, saying many homes in labor camps are not airtight, with some lacking doors and windows. They pointed out that many of the homes have communal bathrooms, kitchens and laundries that also would be off limits during spraying. Outdoor cooking areas, clotheslines and play areas would not be protected.
“The people who are putting food on our tables, who are working hard from before the sun rises to sunset, those people should be able to feel safe when they’re sleeping in their beds, when they’re cooking their food, when they’re in the shower, when they’re walking with their kids through the complex,” said Lisa Arkin, executive director of Beyond Toxics, a Eugene advocacy group.
“It feels to us, to spray people where they’re living is inhumane,” Arkin said.
Advocates asked for a spray buffer between any spraying and the entire living complex.
Oregon's revised proposal doesn’t go that far. But it does include additional provisions that go beyond the EPA requirements:
- Employers must provide covered plastic bins outside homes for workers to store shoes, coats and gloves, to avoid tracking pesticides indoors. They also must construct sheds or storage areas to protect personal or household items from contamination.
- If the pesticide applicator is required to use a respirator, then workers and families would be required to evacuate to 150 feet away until 15 minutes after the application is complete.
- Employers must provide an information station to notify farmworkers of start and stop times of spraying that could impact housing.
In November 2107, the Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers filed a formal objection to the proposed rules, saying they could cost its 440 members millions of dollars annually in lost productionif trees have to be removed or farmworker housing relocated.
Mike Doke, the association’s executive director, said Oregon should target the evacuation provision only at growers with substandard farmworker housing. And there’s no substandard farmworker housing in Hood River or Wasco counties, he said.
Oregon OSHA disagreed with the cost estimate, saying the rule doesn’t call for either of those actions.
Scott Dahlman, policy director for Oregonians for Food and Shelter, says the rules are unnecessary, particularly the requirement to evacuate if the pesticide applicator is required to use a respirator.
“We haven’t seen a huge problem in Oregon with off-target drift in general,” Dahlman said, noting that the Oregon Department of Agriculture has issued only a few fines for violations.
Oregon’s rulemaking comes as the Trump administration has signaled it will attempt to roll back some of the provisions of the 2015 federal farmworker protection standard.
Ramon Ramirez is president of the Woodburn-based farmworker union PCUN, the largest Latino organization in Oregon. He led delegations to Washington D.C. for 25 years trying to get the federal protections passed.
“Farmworkers are literally dying because we’re working with these chemicals,” Ramirez said. “We’ve got to start realizing that we eat cheaply compared to others throughout the world. While Americans benefit from that, farmworkers are paying the price.”
Oregon OSHA has received nearly 800 comments on the proposal, Wood said.
The agency is accepting comments through March 15, and expects to make a decision in early April. It’s uncertain when the new rules would take effect.
Mail comments to Department of Consumer and Business Services/Oregon OSHA, 350 Winter St. NE, Salem, OR 97301-3882 or email to tech.web@oregon.gov.
tloew@statesmanjournal.com, 503-399-6779 or follow at Twitter.com/Tracy_Loew
