BANGOR – It was bad enough that his organic blueberry field and his house in Jonesport were sprayed with pesticides last summer, but when he found out the company that applied the chemical might be fined only $1,000, Alan Lewis was driven to protest.

The Board of Pesticides Control on Friday considered a recommendation from its staff to assess a $1,000 fine against blueberry-growing giant Cherryfield Foods because one of its employees drove a tractor that was applying pesticides across a well-marked property boundary and continued to spray on Lewis’ property. Although the tractor driver was not licensed to apply pesticides and the investigator who reviewed the matter said the boundary between the two fields was obvious, staff recommended against the maximum penalty of $1,500.

The board voted to postpone a decision on the level of the fine and other corrective measures that should be required until its May meeting when officials from Cherryfield Foods could attend, but not before having a lengthy discussion about the adequacy of its rules and penalties.

Lewis, an ecology professor at the University of Maine at Machias, repeatedly told the board that if his case were not egregious enough to warrant the maximum fine, he couldn’t imagine what would be.

Because of a continuing property line dispute with his neighbor, Lewis said, he planted a row of red pine trees along one side of his property. Those trees are now 15 feet tall. Along another boundary are five telephone poles with white metal rods in between.

Cherryfield Foods contracts with Lewis’ neighbor, Merton Garnett, to buy the berries from his 1,500-acre field. The company is then responsible for applying pesticides to the field.

To get to Lewis’ field, the tractor driver drove through an opening between the pine trees, said Lewis, who served on the pesticides board for 12 years. The tractor kept going, spraying pesticides on Lewis’ organic berries. To make the situation worse, the wind was blowing so all 21/2 acres of berries on Lewis’ property were contaminated. All the while, the owner of the adjacent field and a Cherryfield Foods employee were watching.

“I feel abused by the end result because there is zero excuse for this happening,” Lewis told the board.

Because his field was sprayed with Imidan, an insecticide that kills fruit flies, Lewis cannot have berries harvested there certified as organic by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association for three years. Cherryfield Foods compensated him for the loss of two years’ worth of crops.

But the biggest loss, Lewis said, is that he planned to work with his 15-year-old son on the field as a business lesson. By the time he can grow organic berries there again, his son will be in college.

After hearing Lewis’ story, board members wrestled with two issues. One was how to penalize the landowner for his negligence in not stopping the tractor when he knew it was no longer on his own property. Under state statute, however, the board may penalize only those who apply pesticides.

The other issue was whether the fine was high enough. Several members spoke of the maximum $1,500 fine, but none urged that the consent agreement be changed to raise the fine to that level. Henry Jennings, a pesticides board staff member, said that although the situation was one of “high gravity” and that the company exhibited “a very poor standard of conduct,” the staff decided on the $1,000 fine when it looked at similar situations in the past. In addition, he said, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency encourages state agencies to seek improvement in practices, not just assess monetary penalties.

As part of the consent agreement, the board required Cherryfield Foods to develop a drift management plan that would describe steps it would take to ensure that similar events do not occur in the future. Jennings said the plan was deficient.

Calls to Cherryfield Foods were not returned Friday.

In an interview after the meeting, Lewis said that the board needed to increase its fines to make them more meaningful. Now, he said, companies view them simply as a cost of doing business.

Paul Gregory, a spokesman for the board, agreed. In 1989, the board asked the Legislature to increase its fines to $5,000 for a first offense and $10,000 for a second that occurred within four years. This would bring the pesticide fines more in line with those levied by the Department of Environmental Protection.

The increase was vehemently opposed by the Department of Agriculture and farmers who said it would drive them out of business.

No subsequent efforts to increase the fines have ensued, and Gregory said he doesn’t envision any coming from the board in the near future.

“The staff shares the concern over the level of fines,” Gregory said.

Still, no fines would be necessary, Lewis said in an interview, if growers like his neighbor and Cherryfield Foods did what they are supposed to.

“If they’d follow the law, that would be an adequate solution for me,” he said.