The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(View of Seal Rock in Lincoln County.)

When Diana Purdy pulled up stakes 20 years ago to find cleaner air, she landed on the Oregon coast, living in a small home in Seal Rock on property next to woods.

She had left the Eugene area back then, she said, to get away from pesticide spraying at a neighboring vineyard after developing what a doctor diagnosed as a skin and nervous system disease caused by exposure to chemicals.

So when she learned in fall that a neighbor planned to spray his recently cleared 45 acres with herbicides to prepare for replanting, she once again pulled up stakes. She, her husband and adult son stayed at a motel for three weeks before returning to their house.

“I had nightmares,” said Purdy, 72. “It was almost like having PTSD. You have a home and know you’re safe and then you’re not. It’s very scary.”

The spraying triggered a bitter debate in tiny Seal Rock, a seaside community of about 1,300 in south Lincoln County. It also spurred criticism of state regulations that allowed spraying near a populated area and a call for greater transparency about when and where herbicides and pesticides are applied in Oregon.

More than 320 homes sit within a half-mile of the spraying site, many occupied by elderly retirees, according to the county.

Maxine Centala, 69, lives near the harvested timberland and also suffers from health problems triggered in 1994 after pesticides to kill carpenter ants were left in her house and spilled, she said.

“People living adjacent to this property are in their 80s and have cancer or heart and lung conditions, allergies. There is an unusual number of especially vulnerable people,” Centala said.

The county is no stranger to spraying controversy. Voters in 2017 narrowly passed a ban on aerial spraying of pesticide and herbicides, the only one of its kind in the nation, in response to helicopter spraying. The ban is pending in Lincoln County Circuit Court following a lawsuit by two landowners to overturn it.

The Seal Rock case didn’t involve aerial spraying but spraying by hand from backpacks. It was approved by the state and the subject of community meetings and much discussion. The property owner, former lobbyist and businessman Mark Nelson, said he tried to work with residents.

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Lincoln County

(Map of the spray zone.)

Nelson bought the land about eight years ago to harvest the timber when it matured. He needed to burn slash piles after the harvest and kill brush to replant the property. Killing the vegetation is considered necessary to give newly planted seedlings a chance to thrive, Nelson said.

“I had the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Forestry involved,” Nelson said. “Everything was done by the book. All of these chemicals are available to any landowner to go buy. According to my forester, there was no wind, nothing spread, nothing was airborne. I bent over backwards to try to deal with these people. Their answer is, ‘Don’t spray.’ If you’re going to spray we don’t like you.’”

Jim Gersbach, spokesman with the Oregon Department of Forestry, said Nelson followed state procedures. Because of the controversy, state foresters were on site to monitor the spray operation, he said.

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Kris Plummer

(Smoke in the neighborhood from burning on the cleared site nearby, according to residents.)

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Centala first learned of Nelson’s plans earlier this fall. She and a group of neighbors held two community meetings inviting representatives from the state Forestry and Agriculture departments and held two conference calls with Nelson that included Lincoln County Commissioner Claire Hall and a staff member from state Rep. David Gomberg’s office.

They gave Nelson the names of contractors who could mechanically kill the weeds with weed whackers and offered to raise money to pay the difference.

“He said he would call when he got the estimates, but he never waited enough time for the estimates,” Centala said. “He said he had already bought the trees and they had to be planted and the trees could not be planted until all the competing vegetation was killed.”

Centala also moved out of her home temporarily and stayed with friends until she believed she could safely return home.

Karin Ellis, 67, maintains a community email list and said she’s heard from dozens of neighbors who complained of nosebleeds and headaches after the spraying in October and that the slash piles continued to smolder after the burn in November.

Kitty Bone and Tonner Haze live on 10 acres between the sprayed property and the ocean. A creek runs through both the harvested property and theirs.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(View of Seal Rock in Lincoln County.)

“We have water rights that date back to the 1920s,” Bone said. “We are vegetarian and raise organic food on our property. We raise a winter garden that we eat all fall, winter and spring. I have been scared to use the water. If we want to know if any toxins are still in our water, we have to pay to have it tested. It would cost over a hundred dollars per chemical. This is out of our budget.

“We had to flee our home when they sprayed and there wasn’t much notice. I had already gotten sick by the time we left.”

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Nelson said he considered the community’s offer to do the weeding mechanically, but it would have cost at least $36,000 more than spraying and would have had to be done several times. The work also probably would have killed some of the seedlings, trampled underfoot by those doing the weeding, Nelson said.

“When all this came up, I had already purchased the seedlings,” Nelson said. “If I can’t replant because I haven’t eliminated all the brush, sooner or later I come afoul of the law, which is you have to replant in two years. If planting is hampered because you’re in there with a machete … it doesn’t make any sense.”

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The Oregonian/OregonLive/File

(View of Seal Rock in Lincoln County.)

Lincoln County Commissioner Claire Hall said she wished Nelson had given the community a chance to raise the money and hopes the situation leads to re-examination of forestry policies.

“To have this kind of impact on a residential neighborhood is troubling to me,” Hall said. “I think we need to look at giving counties greater control of regulating activities that potentially could be harmful. If the state is not going to do it, at least give us a chance at the local level.”

Likewise, Gomberg, D-Neotsu, also believes this may signal a need to review policy.

“I’m pleased that the owner of the property did reach out and engage in conversation with local residences,” Gomberg said. “But I’m also saddened that they weren’t able to come to a mutually satisfying solution. Do we need to go back and take a look at the statutes?

“I’m seeing increasing sensitivity to herbicide and pesticide issues up and down the coast. I am particularly interested in the transparency of the public record,” Gomberg said.

“When these products are used, how are people notified, what is used, where is it used and how much of it used? The other side of this is we want agriculture to thrive in Lincoln County and striking that balance is important.”

Purdy and others are planning community meetings to consider how to deal with the spraying and slash burning on this property in the future.

-- Lori Tobias for The Oregonian/OregonLive

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