Hundreds of farmers face BLM in lawsuit over herbicide, lost crops

When his beets came in patchy, pushing through the soil with misshapen and discolored leaves, Perry Van Tassell did what most farmers would do. He watered more. And more. And more. "They looked like they were thirsty," Van Tassell said. "They looked like they were in a frozen state." It was 2001, and Van Tassell, like most farmers, had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in his crops. His corn fields stood shorter than his toddler son when they should have been stretching 12 feet high. He came to believe his land had been tainted with Oust, a potent herbicide that kills plants by attacking their roots and leaves. The herbicide had been spread across more than 100,000 acres of nearby public land at the direction of the Bureau of Land Management, which was hoping to prevent the spread of invasive weeds on land that had been scorched by wildfire. But no rains came to melt the herbicide into the soil. The wind picked up. And Van Tassell and more than 130 other farmers claim the powdery herbicide blew across their crops, leaving them with warped plants, barren soil and millions of dollars of debt...AP