Oregon foresters, Seal Rock water district await word from timberland owner whether aerial spraying will proceed

 

By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews

Whether an aerial spraying of herbicides in the South Beaver Creek watershed by a timberland owner will occur is still uncertain despite a company consultant saying last week that it was highly unlikely.

The planned helicopter spraying of herbicides is opposed by the Seal Rock Water District, Lincoln County commissioners, residents who use district water, and people who rely on well and spring water living near the seven parcels and the 473 acres to be sprayed.

The water district has concerns about the possibility of drifting spray contaminating tributaries to its Beaver Creek intake that it put into service just a year ago.

Seal Rock Water District general manager Adam Denlinger and Oregon Department of Forestry Toledo unit forester Matt Thomas said this week they have received no official word from the landowner that aerial spraying will not take place. Aerial spraying by ANE Forests of Oregon must be conducted within a 90-day window beginning Sept. 2, according its notice submitted to the forestry agency.

With no official word from ANE Forests owner Sorn Nymark of Denmark that his company won’t spray, both Denlinger and Thomas said they are moving forward with the presumption that it will.

“We’re still proceeding as if they are going to act upon the aerial notification just to make sure all the ducks are in a row on our end,” Thomas said. “I’m hoping that HFI and the landowner will make a decision on what they’re truly going to do here soon.”

HFI Consultants of Battle Ground, Wash. told Thomas and YachatsNews on Aug. 15 that aerial spraying was “highly unlikely.” But consultant Tyrol Forfar added that any decision would be left to Nymark.

Denlinger is waiting to see if ANE Forests will submit a new permit this week to instead use ground crews spraying with backpacks.

“That’s kind of what I’m looking for in response to this,” he said.

The forestry department has a notification and reporting system which lists operations that will occur on non-federal forestlands in Oregon. The public can subscribe to view planned operations and be notified of spray operations.

ANE Forests can let its aerial spray permit go unused without any further notification, but must submit a new notice if it plans to instead have herbicides applied by crews using backpack sprayers. A new notice would trigger another 14-day window for public comment.

Denlinger, county commissioners and Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, have requested to meet with Nymark to discuss the aerial spray, but have not heard back. Gomberg said Tuesday that he learned Nymark had just recently arrived in the U.S.

Residents in opposition

With 5,500 customers, the Seal Rock Water District is the largest water district in the county, stretching from Newport Airport in the north to the Alsea Bridge in the south. Denlinger has been providing updates to customers of its opposition to the aerial spraying and what it would do if it occurred.

Residents near the spray zones also spread the word. A groundswell of opposition resulted in a meeting hosted by the water district Aug. 14.

When it became apparent at the meeting that neither the water district, state agencies nor county commissioners could stop the spraying because it is legal under the 1971 Oregon Forest Practices Act, one man asked who could.

“Because our group can’t stop it,” Robert Rubin said. “We have no teeth. All these little groups here, they have no teeth at all. So who can stop it? Can we stall them with the lawsuit that Casey (Miller) mentioned? Because what we want to do is stop it. Everything else is useless.”

In 2017 Lincoln County voters passed Measure 21-177, which banned aerial spraying of herbicides. The ban stayed in place for 29 months before it was overturned by a circuit judge who ruled that state laws preempt laws passed by local governments.

County commissioner Casey Miller expressed concern that if people opposed to the spraying go down that same road again, the courts will deliver the same result.

“We don’t have that local authority,” Miller said. He then suggested taking the issue to the state level.

Gomberg told the Seal Rock group last week that changing the forest practices act via the Legislature is possible – but very daunting.

“Let me tell you, that’s a slow, uphill slog…,” Gomberg said. “If we are looking for long-term solutions, that’s possible. But it’s not going to address our immediate concerns. And I’m hearing your frustrations, anger and concerns.”

Gomberg urged people to get their opposition on the record by submitting letters to the forestry department. The agency received “north of 200” letters opposing the spray, Thomas told YachatsNews this week.

Residents have continued the fight to stop aerial and any other forms of herbicide spraying in the county by circulating a petition intended for Gov. Tina Kotek that has garnered more than 2,000 signatures, beefing up its online campaign, and hosting several meetings — the latest Wednesday at the Waldport Community Center. Another is scheduled Monday evening at the Seal Rock Garden Club building.

Wednesday’s meeting was attended by about 40 people, the majority of whom indicated they live in the Seal Rock Water District. They discussed ways they can take actions to continue the fight, including finding a lawyer to see about filing an injunction to stop the spraying.

They also worked on posters to hold along U.S. Highway 101 in Seal Rock and place in high visibility areas to inform the broader public about what is happening. Plans are also underway to find alternative housing for people, pets and livestock who live close to the parcels to be sprayed.

State, federal differences

Herbicides containing glyphosate have been used to prepare ground for seedlings in clearcuts on Oregon forestlands for decades.

Hundreds of herbicide applications have taken place in Lincoln County, according to the state forestry department’s notification records, which have been kept since 2016. There have been 26 completed aerial sprayings in the county since February 2022.

But aerial spraying is a “relic of the past” on most federal forest lands in Oregon that are managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, said Joanie Schmidgall, a spokeswoman for the Siuslaw National Forest.

Neither agency allows for aerial spraying on the west side of the Cascade range.

“It is something we did in the past on large-scale clearcuts that we don’t allow anymore, after the passage of the Northwest Forest Plan,” Schmidgall said.

BLM policy is also based on the 1994 forest plan, but a court injunction that was amended in 2011 allows the BLM to spray on the east side of the Cascades.

Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide that kills broadleaf weeds and grasses. It has been registered as a pesticide in the U.S. since 1974. The Environmental Protection Agency found in 2020 that “there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label.” The EPA also found it is “unlikely to be a human carcinogen.”

In the U.S. it is often used to prepare ground for food crops as well as timber sites to allow seedlings to grow free of competing vegetation.

In 2015 the World Health Organization declared that glyphosate probably causes cancer. The European Union has only approved the use of glyphosate until Dec. 15.

The German company Bayer A.G. bought Monsanto, the maker of Roundup in 2018. In 2021, Bayer announced it would replace glyphosate in all lawn and garden products sold in the U.S. by the end of this year – “exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns.”

Bayer inherited tens of thousands of lawsuits filed against Monsanto by people around the world claiming Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides caused their cancer, especially non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Bayer AG struck a $2 billion deal in 2021 to resolve future legal claims that its widely used weed killer Roundup causes cancer. The company stated that decades of studies have shown Roundup and glyphosate are safe for human use.

Oregon DEQ advises

If glyphosate were to enter a public drinking system it would be considered a high-risk to human health, and it can harm aquatic species, according to Oregon Department of Environmental Quality officials.

DEQ water specialists have been working with the Seal Rock district by making recommendations on how to avoid any contamination. But it is up to the water district to follow up on those recommendations.

In Seal Rock’s case, the DEQ has recommended increased monitoring and shutting down the intake system if herbicides are detected. It also recommends finding out exactly what is going to be sprayed so that it can sample for those chemicals.

Three herbicides are listed for possible use in ANE’s notification — Aquaneat, which contains glyphosate and is more commonly known as a main ingredient in Roundup, Rotary 2 SL, Oust Extra and Super Spread MSO.

“The highest risk is during application and that immediate timeframe afterwards,” said DEQ drinking water specialist Julie Harvey. “Especially from an aerial application because of the drift potential.”

The agency also recommends increased monitoring after the first significant rains hit, which it refers to as the “first flush.”

“It’s bringing that turbidity up, meaning the soil in the water, which can also carry pesticides,” Harvey said.

Seal Rock tests every three months for synthetic organic compounds typically found in herbicides and pesticides, nitrates, lead and copper, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, which are fuels and oils, as well as other things as required by the Oregon Health Authority.

The DEQ’s role is strictly advisory and to answer questions from the public about both water quality and drinking water concerns.

Harvey said concerns about aerial spraying near drinking water systems is common in Oregon and the DEQ spends quite a bit of time working with providers how best to reduce their risk.

“It is a common occurrence,” Harvey said. “It’s something that comes up all the time.”

There have been temporary shutdowns for protection purposes, but Harvey said she is unaware of any water systems that have become contaminated over time.

Drifting spray and complaints

Buffer distances between timberlands sprayed with herbicides and surface water are outlined in the state’s forest practices act and vary depending on whether application is done by ground or air. Aerial buffers are much larger, with a minimum distance of 75 feet from fish-bearing streams and 50 feet from others. Those distances are set to increase Jan. 1.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture is tasked with registering public complaints about drift caused by aerial spraying. It also has the experts that state foresters can consult about herbicide questions.

While aerial drift of herbicide sprays is a violation of the law, it does occur, said Warren Hanson, coordinator for agriculture department’s pesticide response center.

“It does pop up pretty frequently every year,” Hanson said. “Probably just off the top of my head, there’s probably at least 20 to 30 every year. So it is pretty frequent. As far as the distance, generally it’s going to be close (to the spray area).”

People most often complaining of drift usually live close the area being sprayed, he said.

Going back to 2020 there are 27 confirmed cases of aerial drift in Oregon related to the cases he has been involved with, Hanson said. There were more complaints but investigators were not able to confirm those, which doesn’t mean they didn’t occur, he added, because several factors, including time lapsed since a spray happened can affect those findings. Hanson said his records show one case where the spray drifted a mile.

Hanson also said that glyphosate prefers to bond with soil and not water. It has a half-life of 16 days, which means by 32 days it may not kill foliage.

The amount of water in the soil affects how far glyphosate travels, but he said it stays close to where it is applied if the ground is dry. Other factors on how far it spreads include what other chemicals it is mixed with.

Rule changes?

Gomberg said the only way he knows to ban the application of herbicides on state managed forestlands is through the Oregon Legislature. The Legislature is back in session in January — but only for a month.

“We are certainly open to reviewing the Forest Practices and spraying, but I don’t believe that it’s an issue we can address in that short session,” Gomberg said. “The real point is that a year and a half ago, the environmental community and the forest industry sat down over the course of six months to hammer out an accord, an agreement, a set of compromises.

“And we are reaching out to find out if there’s an appetite to make changes in those hard-fought compromises.”

The accord did not address whether herbicides should be sprayed, only the distance of buffer zones.

“The intent of the Private Forest Accord is to provide coverage of forest practices excluding the application of pesticides or fertilizers,” the accord states.

If there is “any action considered on this” it would not come up until the Legislature’s 2025 session, Gomberg said. To find out whether that’s feasible he planned to reach out to Oregon Wild and the Oregon Conservation Network.

“In real simple terms, if I go to the Legislature with a proposal for change and the Oregon Conservation Network is not fully engaged and supportive of that change, it’s not going to happen,” he said.

• Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com