News Coverage
Tainted Harvest
Chemical Taints Imperial Valley Water Supply
Published May 18, 2003
The winter and spring harvests are nearly over in Southern California's Imperial Valley, where imported water has made the desert bloom for a century.
But the miracle of irrigation seems a tainted blessing these days, with the discovery that the water is contaminated by the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate.
An environmental group recently announced that it found the chemical in lettuce grown here, a devastating possibility. Nearly all of the lettuce eaten by Americans in the winter is grown nearby -- and farmers such as 28-year-old Jack Vessey fear an end to their way of life.
''If perchlorate is a problem, you will wipe out a county of California as well as southwestern Arizona,'' said Vessey, a fourth-generation grower in Imperial Valley, where lettuce was a $123 million crop in 2001. He warned that Americans could be paying $5 a pound for winter lettuce grown in Florida or Latin America if valley farmers can no longer grow the crop.
Perchlorate is the same chemical that contaminated, in small amounts, some drinking water wells in Morgan Hill and San Martin. Imperial Valley farmers here are skeptical that the problem is as bad in their fields as environmentalists say. But they are looking to other crops for the coming year and wondering who will take responsibility for the problem.
The contamination affecting the lettuce originated at a former perchlorate factory near Las Vegas where the chemical seeped into the Colorado River, the source of Imperial County's water. The Imperial Irrigation District diverts water from the river and sends it 82 miles to the valley through the All-American Canal.
The Colorado River supplies water for 15 million homes in the Southwest as well as irrigation water for thousands of farms. It is the only source of water to irrigate more than 470,000 acres of Imperial Valley farmland, supply seven cities and keep the Salton Sea -- an accident of nature -- alive.
Against the backdrop of perchlorate contamination, Vessey and his father, Jon, are trying to figure out what to plant for next winter's harvest. Lettuce is their biggest, most profitable crop -- they plant as much as 6,000 acres a year -- but it is looking less likely. No one knows how much lettuce a person would have to eat to be affected by perchlorate.
But if the contamination proves to be the major problem that some say it is, ''I would be done,'' Vessey said, pulling his pickup truck up to one of his fields, green with safflower plants.
He won't go easily, though. ''We've been here a long time,'' said Vessey, whose great-grandparents began farming in the valley in 1910. ''We're going to fight whatever comes out of this. Let's get some sound science before we make conclusions.''
Lettuce currently on the market comes from the Salinas Valley and other regions, not Imperial Valley.