The hearing room was full, with more than 110 Californians from across the state present, including those from the Central Coast. Many traveled hours from home, as far away as Ventura, taking a day from work and rising before dawn to attend the 2½ hour hearing. Community members called on lawmakers to confront the Dept. of Pesticide Regulation’s conflicts of interest and failure to protect the public.
SACRAMENTO — Accompanied by legendary civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, about 100 farmworkers, nurses, scientists, civil rights advocates, and residents of California’s agricultural communities rallied on the South Side Lawn of the State Capitol Tuesday, August 11, ahead of a legislative hearing examining whether the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) is fulfilling its legal mandate to protect public health and the environment.
Organized by the statewide coalition Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR), the rally preceded Putting Public Protection First: Is California’s Pesticide Program Achieving its Purpose?, a hearing convened jointly by the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials (ESTM) Committee and the Senate Environmental Quality (EQ) Committee to evaluate DPR’s performance. Chaired by Assemblymember Damon Connolly and Senator Catherine S. Blakespear, the hearing was held pursuant to an AB 2113 requirement that DPR appear before the Legislature for oversight at least once every two years.
“DPR is not doing its job, and real people are paying the price,” said Cesar Lara, labor representative and Steering Committee member of CPR, who emceed the news conference. “They are farmworkers, children who live next to fields, and families across the San Joaquin Valley, the Central Coast, and rural California who breathe what drifts off those fields every day.”
Lara and other speakers pointed to what they described as a structural conflict of interest at the heart of DPR: the department is funded primarily through the “mill fee,” a fee on pesticide sales that ties DPR’s budget to the continued sale and use of the very chemicals it regulates. Speakers noted that statewide pesticide use has remained high, with 176 million pounds applied in California in 2023.
Dolores Huerta, civil rights leader and President & Founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation for Community Organizing asserted, “. . . when you break it down we are actually causing many, many people to have these horrible cancers that come from the pesticides, and this has been going on for decades, for decades and decades and decades, and we’ve got to put a stop to it now. And the only way we can put a stop to it, is make sure we can get people to say to the Department of Pesticide Regulation, DO YOUR JOB!!”
Jacob Sandoval, California State Director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), framed the issue as a matter of civil rights. “Counties with the largest Latino populations in California bear a dramatically higher pesticide burden than counties with the smallest Latino populations — roughly nine times more, per person and per square mile,” Sandoval said. “That is not an accident of geography. It’s the predictable result of where industrial agriculture is concentrated, who works those fields, and who lives next to them.” Sandoval also criticized DPR’s SprayDays notification system for withholding the exact locations of planned pesticide applications, even when that information is available to the department.
Sandra Garcia, of Campesinas Unidas del Valle de San Joaquín and a former farmworker, described urging DPR for decades to listen to community members like her — only to be ignored while she witnessed loved ones and fellow farmworkers become ill after working in the fields. Garcia said, “As farmworkers, we carry the weight of this state’s food system on our backs, and we are the last to be protected from its dangers.”
Garcia also said many County Agricultural Commissioners — who are appointed by county boards of supervisors and are responsible for local enforcement — remain unresponsive to community concerns and inconsistently enforce pesticide laws. She noted DPR fails to fully use its existing authority — and also lacks some authority — to hold Agricultural Commissioners accountable for consistently enforcing pesticide laws and providing the same basic protections in every county.
Erika Alfaro, a registered nurse, member of the Safe Ag Safe Schools coalition in the Monterey Bay area and representative of California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice, spoke to the health consequences she sees firsthand. Citing the long-running CHAMACOS study out of the Salinas Valley, Alfaro noted that prenatal and childhood exposure to organophosphate pesticides has been linked to lower IQ, attention and learning problems, and other irreversible neurodevelopmental harms — even as use of several of those same chemicals has increased in recent years. “We’re not asking DPR to invent new science—the scientific evidence already exists,” Alfaro said. “We’re asking DPR to take an environmental justice approach and to follow the precautionary principle to use this science to prevent harm—particularly among Latino populations — by reducing pesticide use and exposure.”
Following the news conference, advocates delivered public testimony as one of five panels before the ESTM/EQ Committee hearing. Angel Garcia from the statewide coalition Californians for Pesticide Reform, Anne Katten from the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, and Bianca Lopez from Valley Improvement Projects, detailed specific, documented cases of delayed pesticide reevaluations — including chloropicrin, paraquat, and 1,3-dichloropropene — and lack of enforcement of pesticide protections at the county level.
The hearing room was full, with more than 110 Californians from across the state present. Many traveled hours from home, as far away as Ventura, taking a day from work and rising before dawn to attend the 2½ hour hearing. After the panels, dozens of community members gave public comment raising how pesticides impact their communities, their frustrations with the department, and the need for significant DPR reform – recorded here: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/joint-hearing-assembly-environmental-safety-and-toxic-materials-committee-and-senate-environmental-quality-committee-20260811. Committee Chairs Damon Connolly (ESTM, D-San Rafael) and Catherine Blakespear (EQ, D-Encinitas) were joined by ESTM Committee Member Diane Papan (D-San Mateo). Other legislators granted permission to join the committees questioning the panelists were Assemblymembers Diane Dixon (R-Newport), Kate Sanchez, (R-Rancho Santa Margarita), and Nick Shultz (D-Burbank).
Legislators questioned Director Morrison, who only attended the hearing for her panel, on a range of issues, including DPR’s announcement the previous day that paraquat manufacturers were voluntarily canceling all registrations for paraquat products in California. State Assemblymember Nick Schultz noted that DPR had identified paraquat as a high-priority pesticide for human-health risk assessment as early as 2011 but DPR “didn’t do anything about it in my estimation, including putting it into the reevaluation process. In fact, it wasn’t until the legislature passed AB 1963, by my predecessor Laura Friedman in 2024, which required the reevaluation that the department began of paraquat.” He then queried, “Shouldn’t we as the legislative branch of the state government and more broadly shouldn’t we as the public be concerned when pesticide manufacturers decide to voluntarily cancel registration of their products rather than providing the data requested by the department regarding their impact on human health and the environment?”
Paraquat is a highly toxic herbicide that can cause severe acute poisoning and has been linked in numerous studies to an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. This pesticide was banned by more than 70 countries before DPR’s August 10 announcement of voluntary product registration cancellations in California. Under voluntary cancellations pesticide dealers are permitted to possess and sell paraquat for another two years.
In response, Director Morrison noted that pesticide manufacturers have historically been slow to provide data needed for reevaluations, and that in this case DPR, mindful of the 2029 statutory deadline, stayed on top of the paraquat manufacturers to avoid delays in receiving the requested information.
Pesticides under reevaluation have often been in reevaluation for 10+ years, with at least two pesticides – the fumigant chloropicrin and the insecticide cyfluthrin – having been in re-evaluation for more than two decades, since 2001 and 1998, respectively.
The coalition is calling on the Legislature to:
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Restructure DPR’s mill-fee funding model to eliminate the financial conflict of interest between the department’s budget and continued pesticide sales;
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End decades-long delays in reevaluating hazardous pesticides still in wide use;
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Accelerate the phase-out of the most hazardous and drift-prone pesticide classes, including fumigants and organophosphates;
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Hold County Agricultural Commissioners accountable to the communities they serve;
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Include exact field location information in SprayDays — California’s advance notification system for agricultural pesticides — so community members can avoid fields during active pesticide applications; and
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Make Sustainable Pest Management (SPM) the state standard by adopting ambitious goals to phase out pesticides and a feasible plan to support growers with the technical assistance and resources they need to transition away from use of hazardous pesticides.
“We will keep bringing farmworkers, health professionals, civil rights advocates, and impacted families back to Sacramento to make sure DPR does its job,” Lara said.
Recording of Press Conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1_oNhI1PAU
Livestream and Recording of Joint Legislative Hearing: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/joint-hearing-assembly-environmental-safety-and-toxic-materials-committee-and-senate-environmental-quality-committee-20260811
Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR) is a diverse, statewide coalition of 200+ member groups working to strengthen pesticide policies in California to protect public health and the environment. Member groups include public and children’s health advocates, clean air and water groups, health practitioners, environmental justice groups, labor, education, farmers and sustainable agriculture advocates from across the state.
Dolores Huerta Foundation for Community Organizing – Since 2003, the Dolores Huerta Foundation for Community Organizing has empowered and organized Central Valley residents and youth to transform their communities. Their mission is to cultivate empowered volunteer organizations actively pursuing social justice, and their grassroots organizing efforts in Civic Engagement, Education Equity, Health, and Safety, and LGBTQIA+ Equality aim to amplify the voices of those most directly affected by inequity, recognizing their inherent knowledge and capacity to implement community-driven solutions when equipped with the necessary tools, training, and resources.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization. Founded in 1929, LULAC is committed to advancing the rights and opportunities of Latino Americans through advocacy, community building, and education. With a growing network of councils nationwide, LULAC remains steadfast in its mission to protect and empower millions of Latinos, contributing daily to America’s prosperity. For more information about LULAC and its initiatives, please visit www.lulac.org/
Campesinas Unidas del Valle de San Joaquin (United Women Farmworkers of the San Joaquin Valley) is a grassroots organization serving farmworker women and families in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Co-founded by longtime farmworker advocate Sandra García, the organization provides assistance and education to farmworker communities and advocates on issues affecting farmworker health and well-being, including pesticide exposure.
California Nurses for Environmental Health & Justice (CNEHJ) is a statewide network of nurses committed to healthy people and a healthy planet. CNEHJ educates, inspires, and mobilizes nurses to advocate for policies that protect public health, advance environmental justice, and reduce harmful environmental exposures, including pesticides, air pollution, toxic chemicals, and other threats to community health.