ADDISON – Parris Hammond Sr. and his wife, Wendy, have a stack of death certificates in a file folder on their kitchen table. More than 20 people, all friends and neighbors in this small town, have died of cancer over the past decade.

For much of his life, Hammond never thought about the airplanes and helicopters buzzing overhead, spraying fertilizers and pesticides onto the blueberry barrens less than a mile away from his house.

Then he sat in the local medical clinic’s waiting room, feeling grateful for his own recovery from lung cancer, and watching little children struggling to fight diseases they couldn’t even pronounce. Hammond decided it was time to take action.

“Everyone has to pay the price,” he said. “If we don’t do something, no one else is going to.”

In March, this town of about 1,200 people, where every house is within walking distance of a blueberry field, voted 86-58 to pass an ordinance written by Hammond banning the aerial pesticide spraying that blueberry farmers say keeps them in business.

The ordinance has drawn statewide attention, as environmentalists hope and farmers fear it might set a precedent. Now, both groups are gearing up to fight for their health and their livelihood when the ordinance is revisited during Addison’s July 29 special town meeting.

Welcome to Addison

Since 1797, this has been a village of lobster boats bobbing in the harbor and blueberry fields sloping down to the sea. A working family still can afford an ocean view here, and every resident can write town policy at the annual town meeting.

Hammond’s plan to ban aerial pesticide spraying struck a nerve with townspeople who fear for their health.

“You can hear hundreds and hundreds of stories, but they’re not documented [by scientists],” said Wendy Hammond.

She is a transplant to Washington County, but her husband has lived in Addison most of his life, serving the town as fire chief and selectman. He counts blueberry farmers among his friends and neighbors.

Years ago, Parris Hammond breathed in pesticides sprayed near the ventilation system of the building where he was working.

“It’s like an out-of-sight, out-of-mind deal with these chemicals. People think if you can’t see it you’re safe, but that’s not true,” he said.

Thousands of sparrows and barn swallows had lived in the eaves of the building. Three days later, dead birds littered the ground, he said.

“We have a 2-year-old granddaughter who stays with us. Since the day she was conceived, what have we been exposing her to?” Wendy Hammond asked.

Unfortunately, that’s not an easy question to answer, said Lebelle Hicks, a toxicologist employed by the Maine Board of Pesticides Control. In preparation for a public meeting in Addison a few weeks ago, Hicks pored over cancer data.

Washington County’s cancer rates, at 425 of every 100,000 people, is slightly above the state average, which is high nationally, but there’s no clear link between pesticide exposure and cancer in Maine. Rather, rural Maine’s slightly elevated cancer rates mirror smoking rates, according to the Maine Cancer Registry.

“It’s complicated. Different cancers have different causes,” Hicks said.

For two of the seven pesticides that are commonly used on blueberries – chlorothalonil and diuron – federal regulators warn of a possible cancer risk for people who work with the chemicals. But the others, including hexazinone, which has been found in some Washington County water supplies, are considered safe when used according to federal rules.

The Board of Pesticides Control has not taken an official stance on aerial spraying but assures Addison residents that it monitors the practice. Blueberry sprayers have been fined for violating state pesticide rules three times since 1995.

“We keep a pretty close eye on the applicators because we get so many complaints about the smell,” said Bob Batteese, a staff member for the board. “Basically, the stuff stinks.”

The Hammonds doubt the motives of state regulators, who are employed by the Department of Agriculture rather than the Department of Environmental Protection.

“[Blueberry farmers] have had free rein ever since they started,” Parris Hammond said. “I don’t think it’s their right to decide our fate.”

Blueberry barrens

Addison has about 20 blueberry growers, all of who tend small plots and sell the berries to boost income from other sources – typical of the 550 growers that comprise Maine’s $75 million blueberry industry.

These growers sell their 75 million tons of fruit to the state’s seven large processing companies each year, nearly triple the production in the 1970s, said David Yarborough, the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s blueberry expert and a professor of horticulture.

“We’ve made great impacts in productivity, and really, that’s the reason we’re still in business,” he said.

Yarborough argues that blueberry farmers need access to pesticides as part of an “integrated pest management” program. Constant surveillance and good husbandry can stem infestations of the fungus mummyberry or the blueberry fruit fly maggot, but sometimes, farmers need a little extra help.

“You give growers the tools they need,” he said. “It’s good science.”

Because of integrated pest management, pesticide use in the blueberry industry has decreased 75 percent over the past 30 years, said David Bell, spokesman for the Maine Wild Blueberry Commission.

“We’re an extremely small user compared to many fruit and vegetable growers,” Bell said.

Federal health regulators place strict limits on the amount of “insect matter” that can remain on food. When weather conditions cause particularly bad infestations, farmers can’t meet the standards without pesticides, Yarborough said.

“The consumer demands zero tolerance for bugs in their food,” added Bell.

Blueberry farmers are trying to do the right thing, he said.

“We don’t understand why they want to ban it,” said Nat Lindquist, vice president of operations for Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge, the state’s second-largest blueberry processor.

“[Aerial spraying] is very accurate. We don’t have misses,” he said, describing the GPS tracking equipment in spray planes, and employees on the ground who monitor drift.

So far, farmers have dodged the ban. Early-season herbicide spraying, to keep the weeds down on blueberry barrens, was completed before the new ordinance went into effect. Fruit fly maggots don’t show up until the fruit is ripe. With this year’s late spring, the berries won’t be blue until later this month.

But if a bad infestation hits an Addison field, thousands of dollars worth of berries could be destroyed, and all a small farmer could do is watch, Yarborough said.

Blueberry farmers rarely use tractor-drawn sprayers because the equipment crushes too many blueberries. The only other option is to invest in pesticide blowers, which are placed along the edges of a field. Each blower costs between $5,000 and $10,000. In total, treating a field from the ground is three or four times more expensive than applying pesticide from the air, Yarborough said.

“It’s my pocket you’re reaching into,” Addison blueberry grower Marcus Norton said at a recent public meeting.

The blueberry industry already faces depressed prices and a crowded market. Taking away access to cheap aerial pesticide spraying could push small growers over the cliff, according to growers.

“We have to keep competitive,” Yarborough said. “We’re not in a vacuum.”

The right to farm

The Addison ban alone won’t mean losses for the big processing companies, but fear that it could set a precedent has spurred the Department of Agriculture to action. Commissioner Robert Spear has argued that the ban is illegal under a 1981 “Right to Farm” law that protects farmers from nuisance lawsuits filed by neighbors who don’t like the look or smell of commercial agriculture.

However, 20 other Maine towns have local ordinances to limit pesticide use, including bans on aerial pesticide application in Coplin Plantation, Lebanon and New Sweden, according to the Board of Pesticides Control.

Addison is unique only because it’s located in the heart of blueberry country.

Town leaders are now struggling with how to enforce the controversial rule. The ordinance didn’t state how violators were to be punished, so the issue must be revisited, said Michael Murphy, Addison’s first selectman.

Murphy has argued for a compromise that would exempt blueberry farmers from the ban if they followed “best management practices” as defined by the Cooperative Extension.

“I’ve been sprayed before and I don’t particularly care for it, but I don’t think this [ban] is going to take care of the problem,” Murphy said.

The Hammonds have rejected the compromise, saying it guts the ordinance.

At the special town meeting, townspeople likely will be given the opportunity to choose between two options – rejecting the ban or approving a more detailed ordinance that would fine pesticide applicators between $500 and $5,000 each time they spray pesticides from the air.

For now, the town is watching and waiting. No one has sprayed since March, so the ban hasn’t been tested. Bell attributes the lull to timing, Parris Hammond to fear.

But eventually, the fruit flies will arrive, and blueberry growers will have to make that difficult choice. When they do, the Hammonds and dozens of fellow members of a new statewide anti-spraying group called the Clean Maine Coalition will be watching the skies.

Whirling dervishes

Nancy Oden lives a few miles down the road from Addison, in Jonesboro, where she grows an organic garden and hundreds of lupines amid the foot-high grass all around her 170-year-old farmhouse. An infamous opponent of pesticide use, she has been waiting for this fight for decades.

“Other people have a j-o-b – I can’t even say the word – or kids or husbands … I chose to spend my life trying to save the world. That’s what I do,” she said.

When she heard about the Addison ban in early April, Oden called together friends, including the Hammonds, who are concerned about pesticide spraying and formed the Clean Maine Coalition. The loose group of activists whom Oden describes as “whirling dervishes trying to save the world,” plans to protest at the annual Wild Blueberry Field Day in Jonesboro next week. Oden has purchased Revolutionary War flags that read “Don’t Tread on Me” for the occasion.”This is the year. All of a sudden, there’s a groundswell,” Oden said. “This is independence day. We’re declaring our independence from being poisoned.”

Maybe it’s a lingering unhappiness about the war in Iraq, maybe the cancer cases have just reached a critical mass, but after 23 years of being a one-woman protest, something has changed Down East, Oden said.

“Some people are ready to sign petitions. Some people are ready to hang on the rungs of helicopters … but I don’t encourage that,” she said.

For now, the Clean Maine Coalition aims to get aerial spraying bans onto the warrants of dozens of town meetings in Washington and Hancock counties next spring. They’re hanging notices with the Board of Pesticides Control phone number, asking residents to report pesticide violations, and they plan to approach the Washington County commissioners with a countywide referendum. In the future, a statewide referendum or even lawsuits against the blueberry companies are possibilities.

Oden won’t be satisfied until Maine’s blueberry industry is pesticide-free. Already, Maine is producing between 150 and 200 acres of organic blueberries each year, according to the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.

“Spraying is stupid. That’s stupid farming,” she said. “If a thing is wrong, it’s wrong. You just go for the jugular and hang on.”

Confidence is not a problem for Oden. She’s passionately sure that she’s right and equally convinced that everyone else will come to agree with her – eventually.

“How ludicrous is this? They are allowed to spray nerve gas, chemical weapons of war, from airplanes over our houses,” she said. “It’s suicidal to keep spraying. People need to remember that we’re not all that different than insects. We’re just bigger.”

If the Clean Maine Coalition can just get big enough, and strong enough, they could stop the spraying, she said.

“We all have to worry about our own back yard. No one else is going to,” she said.

Parris Hammond, too, feels a personal responsibility.

As he spoke, he fingered one of the four framed photographs of his and Wendy’s grandchildren, babies who smile at him from the table.

“I’m 58 years old. I’m dead and gone. But I’m worried about the young people,” he said.