Neighbors Object to Noise, Use of Sprays at Nursery

LONG BEACH —  Martha Holliman retrieved a white gallon bottle of bleach from behind her washing machine and pointed to the thick layer of dust that had accumulated near the cap.

She said she has recently been having coughing fits after being out on the enclosed patio of her home along Stevely Avenue near Carson Street. “When I dust out here, I have spasms,” she added.

For 30 years, Martha Holliman said, she and her husband, James, lived comfortably in the shady, peaceful neighborhood. Then in January, a wholesale nursery expanded into the lot behind their back fence, an area that had been used only as a right of way for high-voltage power lines.

Since then, Holliman said, the dust has been so bad that she must cover her interior and patio furniture with plastic sheets. She said the drift from pesticide spraying has twice nauseated her.

The nursery “has caused so much stress that my husband and I don’t even want to live here anymore,” she said.

Other residents have similar complaints. One woman believes that rashes on her face are from the pesticide; a couple, fearing that their children will be exposed to pesticides, limit playtime in the back yard.

Residents said nursery workers have created dust, sang or played loud music, honked truck horns and generally made so much racket that back-yard barbecuing has been curtailed. Residents recently told City Councilman Les Robbins at a community meeting that the nursery should be evicted from the right of way.

Robbins, whose district includes Stevely Avenue, said he will suggest Tuesday that the full City Council request the right of way owner, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, to declare the nursery expansion a nuisance and remove it.

But Robbins acknowledged that Los Angeles County agricultural and health officials have found no evidence of illegal or improper practices at the nursery. Officials have determined that the nursery uses approved pesticides and proper spraying procedures, according to documents received by Robbins.

And a county Department of Health Services toxics specialist found that Holliman’s nausea “was not a true pesticide poisoning, but rather a physiological response to an obnoxious odor.”

The nursery’s owner said he is making every effort to be a good neighbor and has changed many operating procedures.

“We’re willing to work with the neighbors, and we’re being unfairly treated by the councilman so he can get his name in the paper,” said David Sasuga, president of Sunrise Growers. “We’re just getting a lot of bad publicity, and we’re getting unfairly persecuted here.”

Sunrise has occupied the east bank of the San Gabriel River, just north of the Police Pistol Club of Long Beach, for seven years. But the disputes with the neighbors started only in January, when the nursery leased several more acres on the west bank from the Los Angeles city department.

Labored Late Into Night

Residents said workmen started appearing a few feet from their back fences and labored late into the night. Some said they could actually see the vapor from pesticide spraying wafting over their back-yard fences.

“It just concerns me,” said Ricardo Menchaca, who lives in his Stevely Avenue home with wife Donna and their sons, 3 years and 8 months old. “I don’t know what those chemicals can do. Without any scientific study, there is a margin of error. What is the margin of error, and does it put children at risk?”

Donna Menchaca said she limits her children’s back-yard activities to times of day when she can see there is no pesticide spraying.

“Here we have a home, and we can’t have full use of the property,” she said.

Isabelle McBeth said that the spraying causes breathing problems and that her sister, with whom she lives on Stevely Avenue, developed facial rashes. She also complained about noise and dust.

“People can’t go out and enjoy their back yards,” she said. “They are seeing a big conglomerate business out there.”

Although many residents signed a petition against the nursery operation, owner Sasuga said some residents have told him that they like the pretty flowers over their back fences. He said his crews removed truckloads of debris from the empty lot before converting it to a nursery.

Pesticide spraying has been cut back, a 20-foot buffer has been established between the beds and neighbors’ back fences and crews have been told not to work late at night and to be quiet, Sasuga said. Indeed, the loudest noises in the neighborhood Thursday morning were gunshots at the police pistol range.

The Department of Water and Power lease to Sunrise Growers is part of a successful program to find suitable uses for land under power lines, said Frank Kobashi, senior real estate officer for property management.

The leases not only generate revenue but keep the land free of weeds and trash, he said.

“We don’t intend to remove them (the nursery). They’re good and competent,” he said.

He said Stevely Avenue residents may be so used to having the vacant lot behind their back fences that “they consider that to be their property.”

But department officials have decided to reject a nursery plan to expand again to another section on the river’s west bank, Kobashi said.

When told of the decision to limit further expansion, Sasuga said he was disappointed. He said he intends to try to be a good neighbor, even if it means contacting each Stevely Avenue resident and asking what he can do to allay concerns.