Ag candidate visits Midland

Hank Gilbert stopped by the Midland County Democratic Headquarters on Tuesday during his campaign for commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture.

Gilbert used the opportunity to discuss an incident he said could have been catastrophic to the West Texas food and water supply.

“Chances are, you never heard anything about it,” said the Democratic nominee, who is running against GOP incumbent Todd Staples.

Gilbert referred to an incident he said occurred in Eastland County more than a year ago on a 2,000-acre tract rented to plant peanuts. According to Gilbert, the farmer misapplied a neurotoxin pesticide called Temik to the peanut fields in attempt to poison feral hogs.

“In this case, when he did that, he not only killed wild hogs, but they found carcasses of turkeys, deer and other species in various places around the county,” Gilbert said Tuesday.

TDA regulates pesticides. Within a week, though, Gilbert said several other state agencies became involved, including the Texas Department of Agriculture, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Department of Environmental Quality.

“All of these other agencies at some time or other were forced to sit around and wait on TDA in Austin, because they couldn’t decide on their own who had authority,” Gilbert said “In my reform plan, we call for putting everything from field to fork under this agency.”

Gilbert said the spread of the pesticide into the local wildlife population could have been catastrophic.

“You potentially had deer that were walking around with this neurotoxin in their tissue,” he said.

Gilbert pointed to another concern of the pesticide making its way into the water supply through nearby groundwater.

“To this day, as far as we know through documentation, no testing has ever been done on the water supply,” he stated.

And Gilbert said the incident was barely reported to the public.

“When the Eastland County judge wanted to put out a press alert warning the people in his county, he was contacted by the (TDA) chief deputy commissioner about what he could say and couldn’t say,” he said.

Gilbert went on to say he believes the TDA didn’t want people to know the severity of the incident.

However, in a statement provided by Staples’ office, Eastland County Judge Rex Fields said Gilbert’s accusations were not true.

“In direct contrast to Mr. Gilbert’s comments, I received timely information about the incident from the Texas Department of Agriculture, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and the Texas Department of State Health Services. This information was given to me as the Eastland County judge from representatives of these agencies at both the state level and from agents in the field,” Fields stated.

Fields also said as the incident unfolded, field agents and state agencies gave him the information needed to alert the count’s First Responders and inform local officials and the public.

“From my perspective, I feel that the state agencies and their staff acted appropriately, timely, and satisfactorily,” Fields stated in the release. “This event began unfolding just before the opening day of the 2009 deer season and had the potential to affect many, many hunters across Eastland County. In addition to being the county judge, I am also the emergency management coordinator (EMC) for my county. For someone to even suggest that any county judge and EMC would have remained quiet about an incident of this magnitude is ludicrous.”

According to Gilbert, the Eastland incident exemplifies why changes need to be made to the way the TDA operates.

“What we have in this state is a patchwork quilt when it comes to food safety and safety regulations,” he said. “We have so many different agencies who think they have a piece of the pie, and that is why in package we talk of moving them all under TDA.”

Tony Waggoner can be contacted at twaggoner@mrt.com.