The contamination stems from the Colorado River, which provides drinking and irrigation water for most of Southern California.  The perchlorate is coming from an industrial site near Lake Mead, and the Defense Dept. has already declined to do a similar study of how the chemical may be getting into people’s bloodsteams. Unfortunately, it’s not the only site in the country with contamination.

 This is a tricky subject.  Upon first hearing about the problem, the rule-writer for the National Organic Program suggested that all organic farms should be tested for perchlorate in their water, and that any found with a certain level should automatically be decertified.  On one level, this might appeal to your average consumer of organic produce. On another level, it would throw the organic farming movement into complete chaos.  Something that a farmer had no knowledge or awareness of could put her or him completely out of business.  It would be like holding a construction firm liable when a home was contaminated with fluoron gas.

 For now, the idea has been removed from the table.  Unfortunately, it has as much to do with administration politics as anything else.  The entire mess is a potential source of enormous liability for the federal government, which would ultimately be held responsible both for the pollution and any health and economic damage it caused.  So the administration has placed a gag order on the EPA and other government agencies involved.  For now, no one is talking about it.  So far, I have seen no connection between this story and the surprise resignation of EPA administrator Christie Todd Wittman, but I would be amazed if some inquisitive reporter doesn’t find some connection between the two events.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be remembered as the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency who kept her mouth shut during a scandal like this.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
Well, on a local level, it’s a good bet that Terra Firma’s salad greens have less perchlorate in them than Earthbound Farm or other California desert growers.  But in reality, our irrigation water might contain any of hundreds of other industrial chemicals used in the U.S. during the last 50 years.  You can be sure it is full of MTBE, what with Lake Berryessa and it’s weekend jetskier population just up stream.  But so far, MTBE is more of a problem for the folks who drink the water than those who eat food grown with it.

The basic problem is that we have a society that is utterly, completely dependent on nasty chemicals.  We have an epidemic of cancer that everyone talks about “curing” but almost no one talks about preventing.  Many types of cancer have been shown to have external causes, including two of the most common types (lung and colon).  But instead of focusing our “war on cancer” on the most probable causes, we focus on medical procedures and genetics.  “Preventing” cancer might mean abandoning the use of petroleum products entirely and making materials from natural substances.  Hmm.  We know whose pockets would get hurt there.  And as long as cancer treatment remains difficult and extremely expensive, there’s not much risk that the medical industry will see an end to its double digit growth rates.  I guess ending cancer would just be too expensive.

 All the research on links between cancer and chemicals has focused on single chemicals.  To date, no one has even suggested mounting a massive research effort to determine the combined effect on the average person over their lifetime of exposure to the hundreds of potentially carcinogens that fill the world around us.

It would take a large computer and lots of time, but you’d think that now that we’ve mapped the human genome, we’d be interested in mapping how the substances we have created can mess up those genes so profoundly.  Two hundred years from now in a post-oil world, history books may talk about the clear connection between petroleum products and cancer.  In the meantime, all you can do to minimize your exposure is eat organic food and try to buy and use all natural products.  But you can’t do much about the air you breath, the water you drink, or the water that you (we) use for irrigation.

IN YOUR BOXES 
 Asparagus is gone, as predicted, after a nice little end of season rally last week.  In its place will be more peas (snap and English) and brand new summer squash.  Pea season is blowing past us right now, with several plantings stacking up at once.  This is unfortunate, since “ripe” peas don’t hold well either in the field or in the cooler.  We will do our best to share the wealth, but they are one of the most labor intensive crops we grow and that limits the amount we can pick in one day.

 Zucchini is the real harbinger of summer, and after a very slow and sad spring, the plants have responded to a week of warm weather by jumping up in size and pumping out the squash.

 New spring carrots are tender and sweet, with small tops.  You’ll get carrots for the next several weeks, during our transition from spring to summer, and they’ll get bigger as we get closer to July.  I don’t much like cooked carrots, but these are the kind you can slice in half lengthwise and grill or sauté until tender and caramelized.  

 Spring greens — salad mix, spinach and arugula — are still flying out of the field.  We’ve got plantings lined up that should take us a week or two into June, and then we go on “greens vacation” until October.  Enjoy them while they last.

 More coming attractions:  Our first planting of corn has grown about six inches a day since last week.  It’s not tasselling yet, so I won’t make any predictions. But I can say with confidence we will have corn for July 4th, and possibly sooner.  Green beans, meanwhile, are already flowering, which means we’ll be harvesting in less than three weeks — not to long, we hope, after we pick the final peas of the spring.

Thanks,            Pablito