DINUBA, Calif. — For 20 years the vineyards and fruit orchards that surround this small San Joaquin Valley town were saturated each season with a chemical that gave farmers a quick and easy fix.
The soil fumigant DBCP killed the tiny, pesky worms that suck the life out of roots, with dramatic results. "I can remember standing in back of my pickup and I could see right down to the row where I had used it and where I hadn't," grape grower Norm Waldner said.
Eighteen years after it was banned for causing sterility in humans and cancer in laboratory animals, the effects of DBCP are still being felt--this time as the culprit of the worst ground-water contamination in the United States.
Up and down the San Joaquin Valley, more than 100 municipal drinking water wells have been shut down because of unsafe levels of DBCP. In Dinuba alone, 11 of the town's 15 wells are closed. To keep the tap running, local officials have been forced to break state health standards and pump the tainted water.
Like the science-fiction blob that refused to die, DBCP in the aquifers continues to creep from farmland into the cities, mowing down more wells in its path. It has already cost its three manufacturers--Dow Chemical, Shell Oil and Occidental Chemical--$50 million in out-of-court settlements with affected cities and water districts.
The amount could easily double as DBCP continues its voracious march and more cities such as Dinuba press their claims in court.
"No one can pinpoint the environmental and health costs because DBCP is incredibly persistent," said William Pease, a toxicologist at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "It just won't go away."
Pease has documented DBCP contamination of ground water in 18 California counties, including Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and San Diego. More than 1,700 public and private wells serving 200,000 people statewide now exceed federal standards for safe exposure to DBCP.
By far, the greatest impact has been felt in the San Joaquin Valley, where cities rely almost exclusively on ground water and where millions of pounds of the sweet-smelling, amber-colored oil were applied legally and then illegally by farmers after its ban in 1977.
Cities are now faced with retiring wells that routinely exceed the safety limit or equipping them with elaborate filtration systems that pump contaminated ground water into huge tanks filled with carbon, which acts as a cleansing agent.
No city in this vast farm belt has been hit harder than Fresno. Over the past 15 years, an underground plume of DBCP has closed 29 wells, many of them in fast-growing areas. Five carbon filtration systems at a cost of $800,000 each try to keep pace with the problem, but residents of some new suburbs complain of weak water pressure.
Last month, in the midst of a jury trial, the city settled its case against the manufacturers for $21 million in past and present damages and as much as $80 million in future damages. It is believed to be the largest settlement of its kind and unusual in that it compensates Fresno for any wells that may go down in the next 40 years.
Dow attorneys say the companies agreed to cover any future problems because they believe the worst is over, and DBCP is finally breaking down.
"We've resolved the DBCP problem for the city of Fresno in a fair and unique way," said Dow's attorney, Larry Looby. "Whether the settlement becomes a model for Dinuba and other cities, that remains to be seen."
It was at a pineapple research center in Hawaii during the post-World War II boom in petrochemicals that DBCP (Dibromochloropropane) first drew raves. It not only killed several varieties of nematodes, the tiny, parasitic worms that feast on the roots of fruit-bearing plants, but it dissolved in water.
Whether applied via irrigation system or injected directly into the ground, DBCP was the only nematode-killing pesticide that didn't damage the tree or vine.
As word spread to the San Joaquin Valley, growers experimented with the fumigant on a variety of fruits and vegetables. Early users soon learned that DBCP was a quirky product that produced miracles in one field and very little in another. It worked better on some grapes than others. Peaches and nectarines in sandy soil responded better than those in heavier loams.
Sales of DBCP soared. Occidental Chemical Co. in the valley town of Lathrop was processing 50,000 pounds of DBCP a year for farm use in the early 1960s. A decade later, it was buying and selling 60 times that amount.
When vineyards belonging to the Sadoian brothers of Dinuba began losing vigor and showing signs of disease in the late 1960s, they dumped the oily concentrate straight into irrigation pipes and watched it finger down the furrows.
"There was no question that you would see a result the following year," Cliff Sadoian said. "Of course, none of us knew that it was going to do [to the environment] what it did."
