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was found in ground water samples taken from the town of Berryville in Clarke County. The Shanandoah Valley is characterized by karst, an irregular limestone in which erosion has produced sinkholes, caverns and underground streams.
Because of the traits of the terrain, pesticides can easily enter the ground water. In the Northern Neck’s Nominy Creek, 14 herbicides and seven insecticides were found in well samples. Three of the 14 herbicides exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory level.
The Resources for the Future group reported that in Virginia an average of 2.4 million killigrams of pesticides are used each year. The reason is economic. Farmers depend on pesticides to increase their yield as well as improve the appearance of the product.
Without pesticides, the production of crops would be "more costly, the supply would be less certain, and the quality would be lower," said Paul Denton, professor at the University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service. "You can’t have worm holes in a tomato — nobody’s going to buy it," said Bernard Chudoba of the state Department of Agriculture.
"We’ve become more dependent on pesticides," said Eiden. Farmers are rotating their crops less frequently, and monoculture has become the norm. When hundreds of acres of corn are planted, “if gestation occurs, you’re wiping out a lot of money," said Eiden.
“Much of the documented environmental contamination from pesticides comes not from misuse or careless application, but from their repeated use over vast tracts of land,”
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