We are a group of parents, children, educators, and community members associated with the five schools (Sunridge, Apple Blossom, Orchard View, Tree House Hollow Preschool, Nonesuch) forming a dense children’s educational corridor on a block of Watertrough Road in Sebastopol, California. As community members, friends, and parents of hundreds of children in the Atascadero watershed, we are forming this alliance to voice our intense concerns over the impending development of an orchard to vineyard conversion directly in our midst.
We are deeply troubled by the cumulative, chronic, and acute health effects from the use of pesticides, fumigants, herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, and other toxic chemicals potentially involved in these agricultural projects which will undeniably drift in close range onto a large children’s population in their sensitive, developing years.
We are devastated with facing the environmental degradation of soil, water, air, and habitat from this project. The resulting erosion, runoff, dust, and traffic will be polluting our playgrounds, schools, wells, waterways, rivers, aquifers, and land.
As a collective voice we require a final say in determining the character and quality of life surrounding our community and children as a basic human right trumping all other concerns.
