Duff Wilson Interview

Seattle Times investigative reporter Duff Wilson has reported on many local and regional stories over the years, but in 1996 he came across a story that would put his name in the national news. That story, that toxic industrial wastes were being spread on fields as fertilizer, hit the newsstands on July 3, 1996. While it soon caused a new state law to be passed regulating fertilizer contents in Washington state, the story was almost lost in the July 4 holiday and the lazy dog-days of August that year. However, Wilson, nominated five times for the Pulitzer Prize, persevered with the story, and in September of this year, Fateful Harvest was published to strong reviews.

Toxic waste being spread as fertilizer on fields used for growing food for public consumption is a nightmarish story for farmers, grocers, and the public. Wilson's measured tone keeps the fright level down even as he traces the history of this incredibly disingenuous idea. We spoke to him by phone at his office in Seattle, where he is now writing on the U.S.'s readiness for biological attack.

BookSense.com: Tell us how you came across this story.

Duff Wilson: In 1996 I was contacted by the Mayor of Quincy, WA, Patty Martin. She had been looking into some farm problems in her area. She suspected they were related to fertilizer being spread on the fields. She decided she needed more outside help. A friend of hers told her about a small-town mayor in Idaho who was under attack by right-wing groups like the Aryan Nation, and was helped out by newspaper reporter. She recommended a reporter who then told me about the case, and I called up Martin. So we met up, and as we sat there she began to lay out these wild-sounding charges about companies disposing industrial waste into fertilizer. It was pretty unbelievable but, as I looked into it, it became more and more believable.

What kind of time do you get to write a story like this?

I'm really privileged to be part of the Seattle Times' historically strong tradition of investigative reporting. The editors are good about giving reporters two, three, or four months, or maybe even a year to really lay out a story. Up until last year the Times was an afternoon newspaper so we figured our investigative work gave us a competitive advantage over morning newspapers that were in a better position for breaking news.

You've been an investigative reporter for about 10 or 15 years now. What kind of stories have you worked on?

The one I was best known for was on a superior court judge, Gary Little, here in King County. He was a longtime pedophile, and he was the head of the juvenile court. He shot himself as the articles were rolling off the press. I was at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at the time. We'd worked on a two-part story. The first part was about the judge's pedophilia, then the second part was the government response -- or lack of response. At that time, inquiries into judicial conduct were closed to the public. The story caused a state constitutional amendment to open up the process.

Is the process more open now?

It's really open now. Before, a judicial investigator would talk to a person involved in a case, and then they would put gag orders on them. Now when the government opens an investigation, when they reach a certain point, they actually put out a press release.

I was also well known for some articles on the way the Seattle fire department handled an arson fire where four firemen were killed. They were sent in despite the fire department having been tipped off to the fact that it was going to be a particularly dangerous fire and that the building was empty. And I've recently worked on stories about clinical cancer experiments. More than 20 people died prematurely in some experiments at the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle in the 1980s without being told about true risks and alternatives to the experiment, or about financial conflicts of interest by the principal doctors.

How was the toxic waste story different from other stories you've done?

As I pursued the story, it eventually became obvious that it was national in scope. Many of my investigations are local to the Northwest area. This story also had a really good storytelling device in the person of Mayor Patty Martin. She was a good way to frame the story. Patty was an Erin Brockovich before Erin Brockovich! And as far as I could see this was also an entirely new slant on environmental and health issues. I'd never imagined anyone would put industrial waste in fertilizer. I'd done some environmental stories before, on toxic sludge and pesticides, but this was entirely more surprising, and completely unregulated by the federal government.

In the course of your work you run up against city and state officials and other people in authority. Everyone must want you to tell their side of the story.

Oh sure. [Laughs]. Of course the people in Quincy had a lot of other allegations they wanted me to put in the story. There was talk about one farmer's wife who died of cancer and they wanted me to say it was because she walked across this field barefoot. I couldn't prove the cause and effect. On the other hand, the fertilizer people wanted it said that this was a safe practice. Well I wouldn't say that, because that wasn't true. It was legal -- but not safe. Once I could cut through the fog I could see there was a big story here. The heavy metals are being put down onto the soil without the knowledge of farmers and gardeners. Then, depending a lot on the type of soil and particular plants grown there, they were going up in the food chain. It was that simple: what went down on dirt, went up in plants and in the dust.

Some of my best evidence for that came from the Heavy Metals Task Force of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The group was dominated by industry. But they were complaining about Pennsylvania and other states in the Midwest who were sending toxic ash from coal-fired power stations to be used as liming products on fields in the West. A lot of soil in the South and West need more lime than the Midwest and East, and a lot of the lime comes from industrial byproducts. Coal combustion waste is basically particulate manner that they clean out of smokestacks, and it has low alkalinity to make it a type of liming material, but it also has arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. The task force, even the industry people on it, were complaining about that. And they had all this information in the minutes of their meetings about how heavy metals were transferred from soil to plants.

At the end of the book, you mention a law being passed in Washington State about fertilizer ingredients. While it's not a particularly strong law, it is the strongest out there yet. Is there any chance that there will be more protections for our foods?

Washington State isn't one of the top agricultural states. California is no. 1, Texas and Florida are number two and three (depending on whether you talk about quantity or value). They need new laws. Washington now has stronger protections against this practice than any other state. Forty-eight of the states are still completely unprotected, and there's no way for farmers or gardeners to know what's in the hidden ingredients of fertilizers they use.

What kind of crops were they growing in the Quincy area?

Potatoes, all kinds of vegetables, beans, peas, carrots. A lot of wheat. I want to emphasize that this is a national issue. Washington State and the Quincy area probably have more protection for food than anywhere else now. It's the rest of the country that has to be looked into.

What can a person do to find out what kind of materials are being spread on crops in their area?

If they can take a day or a half-day, check out the office where their state regulates fertilizer. If you just page through the file-folders of registered fertilizer products, you can get a good sense from the names of ingredients -- and sometimes the companies -- what may be going into the fertilizers, and therefore onto the fields. You'd be surprised what you can find by just looking through the files. Sometimes it's as easy as seeing who is producing the fertilizer. If it's from a marginal operator then it might not be trustworthy. Another way is to look into the report of the toxics release inventory. How much material is a company producing and where is it going?

I think only Washington State requires fertilizer-makers to list all the ingredients in their products. In Texas they have to give the quantities of the three chemicals that are advertised, but they don't require more complete listings.

For people interested in this, there's a list of references in the end notes of the book. A couple of good websites to start with are the Environmental Working Group and the Washington Toxics Coalition.

Even the EPA has put out a warning on the arsenic levels in coal combustion waste that was being used for liming fields. It takes a lot to get the EPA to put out a warning, as you can imagine. EPA also warns about cancer from vermiculite in fertilizer products, and EPA is starting to look at the arsenic, cadmium, lead, and dioxins.

Your first reports on industrial waste being put into fertilizer were four years ago, but this is still a very active story, right?

Yes. The EPA now has a proposal to regulate fertilizer ingredients. There will be public hearing on it in Seattle on November 29. That meeting was originally scheduled for September, but was postponed until next month.

Will you be reporting on it?

No. I'll attend it, but at the end of Fateful Harvest I give my opinion, so I can't really report on it any more for the newspaper.

Who else is covering the story?

The Portland Oregonian. The Des Moines Register. The Wall Street Journal has done a little bit on it, although mostly from the industry angle. Mother Jones magazine has covered it. The New York Times hasn't done anything yet. It's been covered in the industry newsletters, like Farm Chemicals magazine.

I look on what I do as public-service reporting. For instance, recently I did a story on the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and they were the first negative articles ever written about them. They weren't pleased, but I've since heard from a lot of patients and professionals in the field who are so grateful that we did it. The most successful stories produce hundreds of emails and letters. That's what a free press is for, to continue asking the questions. That story just won an industry award from the Associated Press Managing Editors.

Are you touring to promote Fateful Harvest?

The tour was to have started on September 17 on the NBC Today Show, and then I was going to go on to Washington, DC, Atlanta, and so on. I did do the tail end of the dates, in Portland and Seattle. The earlier dates have still to be rescheduled. We'll post them on the book's website.

What are you reading?

I just finished a book by my colleague Jim Neff called The Wrong Man. It's the definitive look at the Dr. Sam Shepherd murder case. It's a great read. This summer I read a lot of John Updike. I like fiction in my spare time. And I do a lot of reading for my newspaper job. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Recently, a lot about preparedness for biological warfare, Germs by Judy Miller, Steve Engelberg and William Broad.

Do you have a favorite bookshop in Seattle?

Elliott Bay Books in downtown. There are lots of book stores here in town. The University of Washington bookstore...it's hard to choose!

Duff Wilson is a reporter at the Seattle Times. His work has been awarded a Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He lives near Seattle with his wife and two children.