Latino Families Sue EPA, Seeking Environmental Justice for Exposure to Pesticides

In 1999 Angelita C., a Pajaro mother of an Ohlone Elementary School student, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Her case was based on California pesticide records and demographics showing Latinos are exposed to disproportionately high levels.

After the EPA launched an investigation of the complaint, there was a decade of silence. Meanwhile, California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) officials voluntarily implemented tougher regulations, like worksite safety plans and caps on fumigations, thereby addressing the racial disparity Angelita C. and her 10-year-old daughter, Thalia, represented. (DPR maintains those actions were voluntary.) 

In 2011, EPA officials announced an agreement with DPR “delivering on [the EPA’s] steadfast commitment to protecting and advancing civil rights,” a 2011 press release stated. 

Now, EPA officials won’t comment on the matter because it’s back in litigation.

“They used to love talking about it,” says Madeline Stano, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. “It was their sterling civil-rights achievement, but we kind of took the wind out of that.”

In a federal lawsuit filed Aug. 23, an Oxnard family took up the case of Angelita C. (as she’s identified in court papers), again alleging environmental injustice and arguing EPA’s settlement didn’t accomplish much.

Under the agreement, DPR expanded air monitoring for pesticides in several locations, including Salinas and Watsonville. “DPR disagreed with the allegations…but voluntarily agreed to take certain actions,” DPR spokesperson Charlotte Fadipe writes by email.

But attorney Michael Meuter of Salinas-based California Rural Legal Assistance, who represents plaintiffs in both the 1999 and 2013 cases, says DPR’s monitoring and community education efforts don’t fix the ongoing problems.

The complaints call for larger buffer zones and tighter restrictions on pesticides to protect children at public schools in agricultural areas. They cite Title VI of the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the use of taxpayer funds in ways that encourage racial discrimination.

The attorneys looked at 21 public schools within 1.5 miles of the state’s most heavily fumigated areas. Eighty-two percent of their students were non-white, and about half lived in Monterey County.

“This case is really putting EPA’s Title VI program on trial,” Stano says.

The EPA has seen hundreds of Title VI complaints, but only four settlements. Although it’s allowed up to six months to respond to complaints, it took the EPA 12 years to agree with Angelita C. that methyl bromide concentrations near schools violate the Civil Rights Act.

This story has been updated to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this story stated there were 12 years of discussions between EPA and DPR before the settlement was made public. DPR officials say there was no contact between the agencies during the time period between 2001-11 concerning the investigation and settlement. The Weekly has filed a Freedom of Information Act pertaining to correspondence between the two agencies during that time period.