Lake Apopka - Toll On Farmworkers

Toll On Farmworkers

Farmers who had agreed to sell their farms refused to retrain and in most cases to even inform their employees that the farms would be closing. Once the farms were closed many farmworkers came to work only to find out that they were now out of a job. These farmworkers, many suffering the health effects of decades of exposure to the very same endocrine disrupting agents and organochlorine pesticides that caused the bird deaths and alligator mutations, were left in precarious positions that last to this night.

The Lake Apopka Farmworkers Environmental Health Project chronicles the timeline, history, and consequences of shutting down the muck farms :

"May 31, 1998 was the official culmination of farming on Lake Apopka. After 50 years of the seasonal cycle of planting, harvesting, and packing of produce, all cultivation of crops came to a halt. Farmworkers, who earned a living from these farming operations for years and even generations, lost their livelihoods and some, who lived in company-provided housing, even lost their homes. The Farmworker Association of Florida began working to address the needs of some 2,500 Lake Apopka farmworkers in 1996 with the passage of the Lake Apopka Restoration Act. In multiple meetings and conversations with local and state agencies and officials, FWAF was finally able to advocate for a retraining/re-employment program which was implemented in the summer of 1998. Later, through the Federal Relocation Act, the organization was able to help secure relocation assistance for some 70 farmworker families. However, farmworkers’ concerns were soon to change focus in the winter following the farm closures, when the unprecedented bird mortality raised critical questions about persistent pesticides in the muck soil of the former farm lands.

The Lake Apopka farmworkers worked primarily in the vegetable crop industry. The major crops grown on Lake Apopka farmlands were: carrots, radishes, corn, cabbage, different types of lettuce, parsley, cilantro, collards, potatoes, beans, bell peppers, cauliflower, celery, broccoli, cucumbers, peas, tomatoes, and beets. The workers performed various jobs on the Lake Apopka farms, including: plowing, hoeing, planting, harvesting, loading, box-making, washing, grading, sorting, branding/bagging, canning, transporting, and applying pesticides and fertilizer.

A great concern to the farmworker community is whether their exposure to workplace chemicals has produced multi-generational health effects, in particular effects on the cognitive abilities of their children. Organochlorine pesticides, such as those implicated in the bird deaths on Lake Apopka, are generally considered to be endocrine-disrupting chemicals, similar to those that have had impacts on the offspring of wildlife that have been exposed to these contaminants in the wild and/or in research studies.

Efforts over the years to encourage local, state and federal agencies to undertake a health assessment and/or study of the Lake Apopka farmworker community have met with no response or action, yet, the community continues to recount stories of debilitating illnesses and even death among their members. While research into the impacts on wildlife on Lake Apopka are on-going, human health problems, especially that of former the Lake Apopka farmworkers, are summarily ignored.

Not only were the workers exposed in the past to agricultural chemicals in their workplaces, but many that still live in the communities surrounding the lake continue to be at high risk of exposure to a variety of contaminants through various exposure routes due to the multiple neighboring polluting industries and hazardous sites located in the surrounding community. These sources of continuing exposure to pervasive toxins in their environment include: potential pesticide drift from several nurseries located adjacent to residential areas; volatile organic compounds from nearby fiberglass and plastics manufacturing companies and other industries located within the community; two local industrial landfills; two Superfund sites on Lake Apopka; two city sewage treatment plants; and a Stericycle medical waste incinerator.

There remain disturbing and unanswered questions. What is the true legacy of the years of farming on Lake Apopka? What are the impacts on the wildlife on the lake? What long-term effects have years of pesticide and agricultural chemical use had on the health of the lake and its people? How much of the current state of health of the former Lake Apopka farmworkers and their families can be attributed, in whole or in part, to their years of work on contaminated farm lands? These are questions that need to be asked, and a community’s concerns that need to be addressed. Though the news and attention that put Lake Apopka in the headlines for years has quieted down, there remains buried in the rich muck soil, a story whose pages have yet to be opened."

The Farmworker Association of Florida also worked with the community to memorialize their loved ones who were lost as a result of health complications caused by pesticide exposure. The Lake Apopka Farmworker Memorial Quilts were completed in the Summer of 2010 and have since been travelled across the country. Each square tells the story of a farmworker who worked on the muck and contributed to his or her community in a number of venues, as represented on the quilts.