Article: Mothers and Allies Challenge Wine Industrialist

[Shepherd]

Mothers and Allies Challenge Wine Industrialist

By Shepherd Bliss
WaccoBB.net

Half a dozen mothers from Sebastopol and its countryside quickly rallied hundreds of people to their side to challenge Sonoma County’s Paul Hobbs Winery. He wants to convert a 40-acre apple orchard into a vineyard that would use pesticides; it borders five schools on Watertrough Road, including Apple Blossom and Orchard View. Together they have around 700 children.

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Photo: Amber Risucci

The mothers only found out in late April about Hobbs’ plan and in less than a week got over 400 signatures on their petition “Stop alcohol firms from endangering children and the environment.” The conversion has been in process for around a year--as some school officials apparently knew—but parents did not find about it until recently, when workers in hazmat suits showed up to demolish a house and barn.

“We are deeply troubled by the cumulative, chronic, and acute health effects from the use of pesticides, fumigants, insecticides, rodenticides, and other toxic chemicals,” the petition notes.

Parents complain that this fast-moving conversion has had no public input yet and is reaching its final stages. They see it as primarily a health issue. The parents are especially concerned about the possible presence, after decades of pesticide use in the orchard, with the presence of lead arsenate in the soil and the damage it is known to do to children.

Hobbs is an international wine baron with a history of clear cutting forests without permits and then paying small fines from his extensive wealth. He owns vineyards in at least half a dozen countries and sells wine for an average of around $60 a bottle.

The petition was signed mainly by locals, but residents of Norway, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Poland and Saudia Arabia also signed the online version. At least one signer is a local elected official, John Eder of the Sebastopol City Council. In 1999, the Sebastopol City Council passed a resolution to avoid using pesticides on City-owned property.

Some signers of the current petition request that people boycott wine made by Hobbs, which includes his Cross Barn label.

Sonoma County Agriculture Commissioner Tony Linegar met on May 1 with half a dozen adamant mothers, as well as a former Sebastopol mayor, an attorney, a scientist, and a teacher. The meeting lasted for well over two hours. Linegar agreed to form a working group on the problem and meet with them again May 13.

The first public news of this conversion appeared at WaccoBB.net. The conversation on the thread there has included over a hundred posts and remains lively:
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/showt...-School-!!!-!!

MOTHERS COMMENT ON VINEYARD CONVERSION

“We represent many people who are upset by this vineyard conversion. We do not want to be poisoned,” mother-of-two Nicole Baum said. She hopes that this incident might lead to changing some laws, especially as more people move into the countryside.

“Nobody wants their child exposed to something that could hurt them,” added Christine Dzilvelis. “My daughter loves the orchard. It is peaceful and pretty.” It also provides nutritious food—“an apple a day keeps the doctor away”--rather than alcohol.

Dzilvelis and others in the new Watertrough Children’s Alliance are concerned with pesticide drift, asbestos, lead and arsenic poisoning in the soil, and water contamination in the Atascadero Green Valley watershed.

“As the Director of a preschool on the Apple Blossom campus,” writes Barbara Stockton, “I am utterly appalled that this development might occur.”

“My motivation for challenging this vineyard is the science that shows the short- and long-term negative effects of pesticides on children,” commented Estrella Phegan, mother of a five-year-old. “If even one children was impacted with increased asthma, and many more will be, I want to make sure that would not happen here. We Moms are the children’s voices. Keeping our children safe at school is basic.”

Photo: Amber Risucci

“We have children at Apple Blossom and Orchard View schools,” wrote Michelle Muse upon signing the petition. “Our children will be within feet of herbicide and pesticide applications. This is not acceptable.”

Supporters of the mothers are sending letters to the daily Press Democrat and the weekly Sonoma West, which published articles on the pending vineyard during the first week of May. “We work to bring awareness to our community of the risk of losing our apple heritage, and with it some of our food security. Wine grapes are not food!” wrote Paula Shatkin of the Slow Food Russian River chapter, which is part of an international organization started in Italy with hundreds of thousands of members.

“Apples are part of Sebastopol’s cultural heritage, part of our sense of community, and they are family friendly. Children cannot pick or eat wine grapes. Families cannot preserve them or make cakes and pies out of them,” Shatkin added.

Sonoma County does have many sustainable grape growers who are environmentally friendly and use organic, biodynamic, and other integrated pest management practices.

Sun Ridge, a Waldorf charter school based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, is one of the five schools contiguous with the planned vineyard. At their annual May Festival at their downtown campus, attended by a couple of hundred people, the vineyard was a subject of conversation among parents, as well as some children.

“I’m upset about not only the health risks to children but also to birds and bees, as well as the loss of open space where wildlife can live and visit,” commented six-year-old Ely’s father Thomas Cooper. “Even young kids at Sun Ridge are upset by pesticides,” commented Jina Brooks. “Waldorf schools are about sustainability and this vineyard would be the opposite.”

“Sonoma County is apples. The annual Apple Blossom Parade is our tradition,” commented eleven-year-old Olivia Litwin. “Apples taste better when they are from here. Apples are good for you and you can make lots of tasty things with them.”

“I got involved with this struggle because I know we can do better for everyone involved—the kids, the farmers, others in the world,” added Dzilvelis. “My daughter loves being at Orchard View School. We would have to leave if circumstances prove not to be safe.”

“We just got a grant to teach eco-friendly things about communicating with the land, rather than taking away from it,” mother Amber Risucci noted. “This is a whole eco-system that we are trying to protect. Many parents have organic gardens and feed our kids as best as we can. Why would we then send them to schools next to large corporate vineyards that negate what we do at home? We try to live as people whose food nourishes us, rather than harms us.”

INDUSTRIAL VINEYARDS AS CHEMICAL WARFARE

Setting up a new conventional vineyard is like chemical warfare against the soil and other living creatures nearby. Only a few would be pests to the vines, but in the attack the protected chemical warriors kill many beneficial insects and other critters to create their sterile mono-crop. Then the stakes go orderly into the ground in regimented, industrial rows.

This is not nature’s way. Nature will then try to recover by sending up a cover, labeled weeds, to which the chemical warriors return to de-nude the ground again. One would not want to be nearby, especially if you are young, fragile, and vulnerable.

The hazards of agricultural chemicals are revealed by the following:

• The West Fertilizer Company near Waco, Texas, accidental explosion of chemicals on April 17 this year killed 15 people, mainly firefighters, and leveled 80 homes.

• 168 people were killed in 1995 by the deliberate igniting of agricultural chemicals at the Oklahoma City Federal Building, including 19 children under 16 years old. 324 buildings were damaged and 680 people were wounded.

• The European Union recently banning certain pesticides because they have been implicated in the massive bee colony collapses, which threatens the pollination of one third of humans food supply.

“How can the school continue to be called Apple Blossom if there are not apples to be found nearby?” writes Amy Taganaski, who has two children there. It is not the right place for a vineyard, contend the mothers and their growing number of allies.

Nor the right winery. Hobbs has been described as the “bad apple” of Sonoma County’s bloated wine industry.

Hobbs’ Public Relations Manager Tara Sharp claims that the winery plans to be “good stewards of the land.” Its track record is otherwise. Hobbs “zeal for deforestation” was detailed by journalist Will Parrish in a June 2, 2011, article in the Anderson Valley Advocate (AVA).

Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo published a blistering critique of Hobbs in 2011. “Hobbs has shown a blatant disregard for Sonoma County, its resources, his fellow vintners and community sentiment” Carrillo is quoted as saying on the Sonoma County Gazette website. “His wines are unpalatable as they carry strong tones of environmental harm with overwhelming notes of arrogance.”

This current struggle, according to former Sonoma County Planning Commissioner Rue Furch, may “help us move the county to a more sustainable agricultural future.”

The petition can be found at https://www.thepetitionsite.com/263/347/984/stop-corporate-alcohol-firms-from-endangering-children-and-the-environment/#sign

The Watertrough Childrens Alliance recently set up the following website:
https://watertroughchildrensalliance.weebly.com/

(Shepherd Bliss operates a farm near the proposed vineyard, teaches college, and can be reached at 3sb.comcast.net)

[MamaBird]

Thank you so much Shepherd for being such a wise human and for helping us to understand this process. Your article is so well researched and accurately documented. Its wonderful to read honest journalism.

I am part of the Watertrough Children's Alliance. If anyone would like to contact us we have a website set up where we will be keeping information going and to alert everyone to our findings. Our group email is [email protected] and our website is https://watertroughchildrensalliance.weebly.com/

If I may just speak for the group for a minute:

We are working day in and day out to learn as much as we can about the local Agricultural history and understand what it is that we have been and will be exposed to in this conversion process. Our main concern truly is the safety and wellbeing of all of the people in the schools that are to be affected by this conversion and impending new crop. We are not here to demonize anyone or anything, we are interested in seeing real change and rules that keep our children safe for years to come. We are so thankful to all of the people that support us and for all of the wisdom we have gained in this short period of time. We understand that this is the perfect storm and we are not backing down or losing steam.

In your communications with us and about us, please understand that we are parents first and our priorities are , have been and always will be our children and their safety.

Mothers and Allies Challenge Wine Industrialist

By Shepherd Bliss
WaccoBB.net

[mamaj]

I am the very concerned parent of a student at Orchard View school who wrote the first post , Apple Blossom school now wine grape school??!!?? I was so shocked when my daughter first told me about the possible vineyard going in.

I also have grown up in Sonoma County,my family first came here in the 1860s'. I have posted addittional stories about the winery business and the people which own them, it is all very true. We must stop Hobbs and anyone else who wants to destroy a healthy apple orchard, or even plow under the open land in our community and county. Once they begin, the land is dead forever. I can see these vineyard vultures in different areas of western Sonoma County hovering over property, seeing only the big money .The land owners are also guilty of selling out or leasing their land, ignoring the circumstances which do occur by their poor decisions.

I am a victim of our previous neighbor, Jack Cleary, a retired San Francisco policeman who has owned a ranch in Freestone for several years. He sold out to Dutton winery in the late 1990s'. He seemed like a good neighbor until he made the horrible decision to lease all of his land to the lying, greedy Duttons'. Ever since he did this, it has opened the door for Phelps winery to take over a huge area of serene beautiful land at the end of Freestone Flat rd..

Hiring his son and so called friends to kill all the turkeys and wild life which lived there. They never had a chance to escape, because they were murdered in their sleep!

Since the Duttons' began their spraying I have had Athsma,I'll never forget the horrible smell which we could not escape from as well. Winerys' are killing the land,the animals, birds, fish etc., insects and humans. Pesticides are poison.

Did we forget about Vietnam? My brother was there, he was drafted. He learned how special the good people of Vietnam were and wanted to help them. The U.S. government lied to our soldiers about the agent orange and additional chemical spraying they were doing and claimed it was safe. My brother was wounded and recieved a purple heart. When he came home he learned more about the effects of pesticide spraying . He spent many years interviewing, talking to ex-vets about their health issues in relation to pesticide spraying. Then babies were being born with mild to severe deformities. These health issues were proven to be caused by their parents being exposed to pesticides in Vietnam.

My brother died in 1990, 28 yrs. after being exposed, cancer killed him, cancer caused by exposure to pesticides! For many years after he returned up to the time of his death, he went everywhere, traveling to Washington D.C. helping veterans' with their health and trying to expose the reality of pesticides to our government and officials involved. Being ignored by our government, but never giving up helping our veterans and their children and families. My children lost a wonderful uncle, they never got to hug and share their lives with, and I lost a brother I loved dearly, my best friend. I saw him suffer greatly before he died, and he lost so much weight you could no longer recognize him.

I have friends now who are from Vietnam, now living here. They are the lucky ones. We talk about their country, and it is devastating what all the pesticides from 30-40 yrs. ago have done to their land and to the people there. They speak of children still being born with deformities, people there in their adult age not developing past the age of a 4yr.old.The land is destroyed forever, and now big developers are moving in, destroying what farm land is left, pushing people out of their homes and land. Farming is everything to these people, it's their way to survive and support their children. My friends probably would not be alive today if they did not leave and come here. One week after my brother died, I saw in a news paper ,"the U.S. Government now recognizes, agent orange and other pesticides are lethal and causing mayjor health issues with our Vietnam veterans' and their children."

This is only the pesticides, there are more damages then pesticides which occur when putting in and raising grapes. I grew up at Korbel winery, I have lived in Freestone where the winery owners aggressively took over, they will do anything, always bad, to do what they want to move on with their "business plans". They really do not care about where they do it or what effects it has. We must stop them, beginning in our county, beginning at 622 Water Trough rd.

There was a family who lived there for over 50 yrs., the owner of the apple farm told them they would "always be able to stay there". Their children were born there, their children raised there. Grandparents lived there in a separate house.The owner sold out to the winery business and turned his back on this family, making them homeless, according to a mutual friend I spoke with. She has been trying to keep in touch with this family in great concern, but has not heard back from them yet.

There is a open house at Orchard View TODAY at 5:00-6:30 . I hope the petitions will be there for the school and all involved can sign. We also need more media exposure, I will do what I can but we all need to be involved, the media needs more than one e-mail or one phone call, we as concerned humans all need to do this.

Do not try to negotiate with Hobbs, he will only continue to feed you out of his dirty hands! And pray for new laws to keep people like him away........ I'm so proud of all the caring and involved people who are taking action and please don't give up!

[rossmen]

living next to a vineyard i don't see how grape growers can claim less drift than apples;

[rekarp]

I lived in a house in the middle of an apple orchard in Sebastopol for four years, and during spraying it was like a war zone. There were huge clouds of mist from the spray - probably because the trees are so tall and they are spraying up instead of to the side in the vineyard. I'm no fan of pesticides in any form, but I have to say that the spray in the pictures you posted are minor compared to what they did in the orchard.

Important questions to ask are the types of pesticides (and other poisons) used, the quantities, and the frequency of spraying of apples compared to grapes. I remember many years ago when alar was banned on apples. I wonder what is used in its place?

Ron

living next to a vineyard i don't see how grape growers can claim less drift than apples;

[rossmen]

the vineyard used to be an apple orchard and the rigs are the same, they spray up. the pictures don't show all the mist. alar was sprayed directly on apples after harvest and i believe the purpose was to delay ripening and it isn't banned, just unnecessary and bad pr. the pictures are from this morning and the smell was of pesticides. this will happen about once a month through august. when i called the county ag office a few years ago about the spraying in response to tenant concerns, they were very politic, talk to your neighbor. the message i got was they don't have to tell you anything. i have a good relationship with my neighbor and want to keep it that way.

the topic of which is less toxic; conventional vineyards or orchards? reminds me of people claiming their shit doesn't stink. my own observation is that as a vineyard, the neighboring acreage has less and less diversity of life over years.

I lived in a house in the middle of an apple orchard in Sebastopol for four years, and during spraying it was like a war zone. There were huge clouds of mist from the spray - probably because the trees are so tall and they are spraying up instead of to the side in the vineyard. I'm no fan of pesticides in any form, but I have to say that the spray in the pictures you posted are minor compared to what they did in the orchard.

Important questions to ask are the types of pesticides (and other poisons) used, the quantities, and the frequency of spraying of apples compared to grapes. I remember many years ago when alar was banned on apples. I wonder what is used in its place?

Ron

[Josha]

I grew up a few miles from Twin hills school. I had a brother pass away at seven weeks old due to kidney failure. The cause of the kidney failure was the pesticides that are sprayed on the apple orchards. Do not let this happen to another family.

[mamaj]

I am so sorry to hear about your loss. Like what happened to my brother, sometimes the affects of pesticides can take several years before they kill.And in your family's case sometimes they can affect us quickly. It also looks like your have the proper grounds for a mayjor lawsuit against the company who makes the pesticides,and the owner of the orchard who used it.Don't be afraid to go after these companies,rech out to your neighbors and community,go for a class action lawsuit. It is extremly important to fight for justice to be served for a healthy enviroment now and future generations.

I grew up a few miles from Twin hills school. I had a brother pass away at seven weeks old due to kidney failure. The cause of the kidney failure was the pesticides that are sprayed on the apple orchards. Do not let this happen to another family.

[MamaBird]

If you would like to stay informed and help us to gather as much info and resources as possible to fight this conversion and to set up new guidelines for chemicals in a school zone, please "like" us on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/WatertroughChildrensAlliance

I would ask that all postings on there be relevant to our cause and for the betterment of our children.

Thank you- Amber