Hi Donna. As @Fruitnut mentioned, I have had lots of experience with your problem, and right here in TN!!! But my situation- at least when it comes to the state- was ENTIRELY different from yours.
The thread posted above is a minor one… The thread I really want you to read which sort of chronicles my whole experience from the moment I was trying to figure out what was wrong with my trees (turned out to be 2, 4-D) all the way up to resolution can be found here:
the title of the thread is because I started off just wondering why my pears had this accelerated, but twisted growth.
The main thing I want to convey to you is that my experience with the state folks was totally different from yours. Yours sounds like what I was expecting, and what usually happens in government, especially when its a “little guy” complaining about a “big guy”. And my case was just like yours in that regard as well…I am a 6 acre hobby grower and the man who sprayed me is a massive-scale farmer from a family of massive scale farmers with a long history and a lot of power. So I expected to be blown off…but it was the opposite. Its one of the few times I HAVE been impressed with state government!
I did however, take a different approach which I believe made all the difference. It turns out that I am a City Manager and have worked my whole life in government, so I took an approach that time and experience has taught me is helpful. What I did is called my state senator first and asked for the number of the Dept of Ag people who oversee spray drift and other pesticide issues. I didn’t call him because I have any power (I don’t) or because I thought he would be especially helpful (I didn’t) but so I could use his name. I then called the supervisor of the drift spray state employee, and I told him "I talked to Senator XYZ today about a spray problem I have. He was upset about it and gave me your phone number and said you would help me with this. I wasn’t lying- I did speak to the Senator for about 45 seconds before he transferred me to his staff who I’m sure looked up the name and number from the internet as I could have done. So yes, I was bluffing (but not lying) when I asked like I had a personal relationship with the senator and that he was angry and would be following my case! ha. So the supervisor took me seriously and told me he was going to give me the number of his “best” spray person. By the time I got to her, she new a senator and her boss were involved in this, she probably figured I had a good deal of clout/power to get them involved (I didn’t), and she therefore took it serious. Whether it was my little trick or just good luck I don’t know, but I got a good spray person Iit was a woman, btw) who did a great job on my case.
I have 3 different farmers who spray 3 different sides of my property, so if ever there was a case where the state lady could have just said we can’t tell who drifted it would have been my case, but she didn’t do that.
This woman actually did interviews with not just the 3 farmers who join me, but also about 3 others who spray land not too far from me. She got all the dates that they sprayed, she pulled wind weather reports for all those days to see how much wind there was. She went to 5 or 6 different farmers and pulled samples from their tanks. She picked leaves off of about 50 of my trees, and sent all that to the lab and asked them to compare the residue on my leaves to what came out of each tank she took samples from. Using this and other things, she eventually determined which farmer had sprayed me. She filed a GIANT report on everything she did and everything her investigation uncovered and so on. SHe presented all of this to some kind of hearing board at the TN Dept of Ag., They found the farmer guilty. Better still they fined him fairly hard (I want to say $1,000 but can’t swear to the amount now) and they made him drive to nashville 2-3 days to take a long class in how to properly spray. They also gave him some kind of probation that said if he did this again, he would be fined $10k AND would loose his right to spray chemicals, meaning he would have to bring in some outside company everytime he sprayed anything- which I’m sure would be extremely expensive.
Of course the neighbor got mad at me for reporting him and getting him in trouble so he had to take a class, pay a fine, and be on “spray probation”. Funny how he killed and permanently damaged a bunch of my trees by carelessly spraying with too small droplet size and too much wind…but he was mad at ME!!! It was awkward because the uncle of the man who sprayed is the Mayor of the town where I am the City Manager, meaning he was kind-of my boss!!! ha.
Anyway, I’m sorry you’ve had such bad results from the state Ag folks when I had such good ones- whatever the reason. I am middle TN region, btw, so that might also account for differences. Anyway, if you have other questions, I’ll be glad to tell you more or try to answer them. Good luck!
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