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Given the seriousness of the public health consequences of herbicide use, it is imperative that both the general public and Caltrans' sister state agencies have access to accurate information provided in a timely manner. State law reflects these needs.
For nearly a decade, California law has required government agencies to report roadside spraying to state regulators while an earlier law, the Public Records Act, has guaranteed public access to government records. Yet public information requests undertaken for this report uncovered evidence that officials from many of the twelve Caltrans districts and fifty eight county road agencies are either reluctant or unable to provide documents to the public about their use of herbicides.
Some representatives of government agencies contacted in the collection of data were helpful. Others were indifferent or uncooperative, which should give rise to concern since the agencies' are large users of chemical weed killers on California's thoroughfares, the most heavily used public facilities in the state.
Caltrans: Information Bottleneck
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires that managers from each of the twelve Caltrans districts compose an annual plan describing in detail how vegetation will be managed on roads under the district's jurisdiction. Although meant to be accessible to the public and regulatory agencies, the plans are indecipherable. Nor can herbicide applicators follow these plans when they are out spraying roadsides.
The annual vegetation control plan issued by Districts 1 and 2 maintenance managers includes a delineated summary of chemical herbicide use as it is required under CEQA. None of the other ten Caltrans district offices could promptly produce a similar report, taking up to seven months before furnishing the legally required summary.
Some districts did not provide the summaries until a grueling series of phone calls and letters to agency officials in Sacramento were aided by the intervention of a state senator.
One manager from Caltrans District 4 clearly articulated the prevailing attitude about supplying intelligible information. "While we are not required to total up the data for you," he wrote, "we will have our staff perform this work for our overtime rate of $47.72 per hour."
Other District offices delayed providing information and when finally compelled to do so also revealed their incomprehension of public record law. District 6 officials waited five months to reply to an initial informational request, then insisted that supplying the data would cost $500. The worst response time was logged by employees of District 7 who dragged their feet for seven months before giving the information that was requested.
Either Wrong or Useless
Officials in Districts 3, 4 and 8 would not provide summaries of their annual plans until the headquarters office in Sacramento intervened. Staff in all three districts failed to convert units when they added gallons, quarts, and pints - and never noticed their mistakes.
The dismal record of District office responses revealed that annual plans, essential to agency understanding and analysis of its herbicide use, are seldom compiled. Even worse, these annual plans show an unjustifiable optimism about their utility.
"The plan is not an accurate reflection of what is done. It's not useful to me as a manager," one senior Caltrans official finally admitted after months of fielding requests for information by researchers for this report. Another noted that the District plans cannot be followed on the road because, he said, herbicide applicators "cannot adjust their spraying to follow the plan while they are trying cope with traffic and their equipment."
Pesticide Use Reports - monthly summaries of herbicide use which contain far less specific information than each district's annual plan but which record amounts of chemicals used - were not, one Caltrans senior official initially claimed, available to the public. When finally presented with the numerical name for the document, though, the agency was able to provide thousands of bits of data - but delivered it on a stack of paper, uncompiled.
In addition, the Caltrans representatives failed to include the herbicide use records of its landscape contractors and did not know how much the agency spends on weed killing chemicals. "We've spent somewhere between $4 and $6 million dollars for herbicides each year for the last several years," said one senior official in a recent interview, but, he admitted, inadequate bookkeeping practices prevent Caltrans officials from making anything more than a guess of the actual amount.
Back Roads and County Thoroughfares
Although Caltrans is the state's premier road agency, each of California's fifty eight counties also have departments that maintain roads under county jurisdiction. Statewide, these roads traverse 64,000 miles, ranging in length from 134 miles in Alpine County to 3,623 miles in Fresno County.
There is a great variety among county road agencies in their responses to citizen requests for information. Slightly more than half answered requests for information regarding their vegetation control programs within five months. Others took as long as seventeen months. Like Caltrans, it appears the county agencies' delayed response and, often, inaccurate information was due to their failure to appreciate the public's right to the data, and because of inadequate record keeping.
Of particular concern is that many of the officials who exhibited an inability or unwillingness to provide information that should be readily available to the public also represent districts which spray the largest quantities of chemical herbicides. Among the twenty California counties which use the most herbicides, twelve demonstrated significant bureaucratic ineptitude including inability to compile their own data, provide a summary of herbicide use, respond to information requests within half a year, and define the size of the area they spray.
Cash Up Front
Several county road agencies were especially noteworthy in the delay and/or inaccuracy of the data they provided. Road managers for Los Angeles County admitted they do not keep track of roadside herbicide use totals and declared that the information couldn't be supplied for less than $3,140. Later deciding not to charge for the documents, they provided two reports which could be understood only after several days corroborating and collating the data.
CATs had to write or call Sutter County road officials five times over a period of eight months before it received a response to its inquiry. These Sutter County officials then referred CATs to a different agency that wanted to charge for the labor involved in processing this data, a violation of state law. The information was eventually provided for the cost of the copies.
Other major herbicide information bottlenecks included Amador County, where seventeen months passed before county representatives furnished raw, uncompiled data, and Ventura County, whose representatives couldn't relate how many acres or miles of roadside they use herbicides to defoliate each year. Finally, officials from Sacramento County, home to the state's capitol, were reluctant to share public information about their herbicide use. After stonewalling numerous requests over a one year period, Sacramento County road managers finally supplied the raw data - but they refused to compile it, once again a violation of CEQA.
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