“They won’t even look us in the eye.”
That’s how Brent Linas, one of the founders of the Creek Team, described the Orange County Board of Supervisors during a vote on Tuesday that effectively disregards the groundswell of grassroots efforts to stop herbicide spraying in the county’s creeks. Item S-10A, a measure that would have restricted the spraying campaign, was voted down by Supervisors Don Wagner, Doug Chaffee, and Janet Nguyen. With the bill dead, Orange County Public Works can now resume the chemical campaign across the county. To make matters worse, they don’t even have to notify the public as to when, or where, they will spray.
Pesticide exposure — and glyphosate specifically — has become a defining issue for the MAHA movement, which has framed it as a national health concern. Orange County, one of the most conservative counties in California, just voted in the opposite direction.
If you read my earlier piece, or have been following along on Instagram, you know the Creek Team has been documenting the spraying since this February. An estimated 150,000 gallons of herbicide go into Orange County creeks annually — including glyphosate (Roundup), triclopyr, imazapyr — sprayed twice a year, every year, in the name of flood control. Most of it ends up in the ocean. Most surfers, citizens, and visiting beach goers, had no idea this was happening. Thanks to the Creek Team, now they do.
In a few short months they have built a viral campaign with zero fundraising efforts and effectively created one of the most thorough grassroots public health campaigns to ever hit Orange County. What happened in the chamber on Tuesday is its own story; despite hitting a nerve that doesn’t just resonate with locals, but aligns directly with one of the four main points of the MAHA movement, all who attended this week’s vote were barely acknowledged.
The Creek Team showed up at 9:30 AM alongside representatives from Surfrider and Coastkeeper. Roughly 25 people who’d been organizing around this for months, plus over 500 letters of support that had been submitted in advance. They waited eight hours to speak.
Although the supervisors are treating them with disrespect, this story continues to gain steam with media outlets. In addition to SURFER, Creek Team has been featured on FOX, LA Times, and multiple local outlets like the Voice of OC.
LA Times
Rather than properly acknowledging their concerns, the bureaucrats focused on another issue: a $3.7 million corruption scandal tied to former Supervisor Andrew Do, whose daughter was indicted last year for misappropriating COVID-19 relief funds. 140 people came to speak on that. While that is no small sum, it makes up merely .02% of the county’s $11 billion annual budget. The concerns brought by the Creek Team coalition affect countless people, whether or not they use the beaches. Anyone who eats locally caught fish could be ingesting a slew of toxic chemicals thanks to the county’s foolish approach. From my standpoint, these supervisors are ignoring these people at their own peril — they may very well find themselves sharing a jail cell with their former colleague.
By the time S-10A came up at 5:30 PM, the board had decided each speaker would get one minute. The standard is three minutes. They made them wait all day only to sabotage their right to speak. Brent, who’d been working on this for nearly one year, refused to wrap his testimony in 60 seconds and was removed from the podium. To recap, for simply speaking for 90 seconds — after waiting eight hours — a Sheriff was sent to intervene.
While the other Creek Team members spoke the Supervisors wouldn’t even make eye contact with any of them. The vote came shortly after. Wagner, Chaffee, and Nguyen all voted no. It should be noted that Chaffee deliberately switched the order of items that day in attempt to drown out the Creek Team. See the video below for the full recap.
Unfortunately, this is part of a larger pattern that goes way back. The Orange County Board of Supervisors hasn’t held a public town hall on this issue since the first one late last year, which was, by most accounts, a disaster for the board. The Creek Team had come prepared with data, with documentation, with footage. The supervisors hadn’t. After that, the town halls stopped.
Brent’s first attempt to breach the issue was met with ridicule, essentially treating him as if he was some bum who knew not what he speak. That was the moment that lit the fire that built the Creek Team. The same fire that’s brought hundreds of letters and the participation of two of the largest coastal advocacy organizations in California. And the same fire that the board, on Tuesday, met with a 60-second timer and a series of declined gazes.
What’s lost in the vote, beyond the activists’ effort, is real. Orange County’s creeks drain to some of the most heavily surfed beaches in California. The chemicals being sprayed don’t stay in the channels. Manual vegetation removal — a more honest approach that respects what these waterways actually are — was a pilot program getting traction. Neighboring San Diego County does the work without the chemicals, and the difference is something anyone can get behind regardless of their political views.
If the Creek Team has done anything it’s to show that the people have spoken and clearly said, ‘We don’t want poison sprayed where we live, play, and eat. Not now. Not ever.’
We covered the beach economics in the first piece and it’s worth bringing up again. California’s coast generates $520 billion in annual economic output and four times the tax revenue our National Parks bring in. We only spend $85 million a year on beach nourishment. The argument that environmental work is too expensive falls apart fast when the math is on the table. Reform is desperately needed to preserve the value of our precious resources. Doing the work right is cheaper than gambling with people’s lives and well-being.
Brent’s video about the vote ended with an open question, ‘what should we do next?’
That’s a question for Orange County to answer and they would be unwise to ignore their residents who care about whether the water they swim in has glyphosate in it. Or those homeowners who live along the creeks. Or the parents who want to give their kids a chance at a life safe from The Creek Team has done the work of bringing the issue to the board. The board has shown its hand.
The vote is over. The campaign isn’t. We’ll keep you posted as the story unfolds.
Related: Orange County Has a Poison Problem and It’s All Draining to the Beach