The father sitting in the front of the audience just couldn’t sit still for the bureaucratic circus put on by Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley during a heated town hall at Dana Point Harbor.

A packed audience of more than 200 people jammed into the OC Sailing and Events Center meeting room on Monday night to learn more about the raging controversy over the use of herbicides in nearby creeks.

Those streams feed into the mouth of Doheny State Beach – consistently rated by the county Health Care Agency as one of the dirtiest beaches in Orange County. 

“Non-Hodgins Lymphoma,” the man in the front row kept shouting, referring to his son, as he cast tough questions from the audience to a gathering of stone-faced, official geeks from a slew of county agencies.

Yet for all the bureaucrats gathered, none of them answered questions in a straightforward manner for three hours.

Residents here are clearly freaked out by the implications of the information that local activists – now called the Creek Team – gleaned from public records requests to the County of Orange over the last year about the use of cancer-causing herbicides in Trabuco Creek and San Juan Creek, which pours out daily onto the shores of Doheny Beach.

[Read: Santana: Herbicide Could be Making Its Way to South OC Beaches]

Residents in Dana Point at the OC Sailing and Event Center Meeting Room. Credit: NORBERTO SANTANA, JR., Voice OF OC

It’s the exact place where this man’s son apparently grew up playing. 

A “Jetty Rat,” as one local activist told me in the parking lot after the meeting, explaining why the man in the front row was so intense and unable to sit through the bureaucrat’s bullshit without reacting.

This was a crowd too informed to be fooled. 

And they asked good, hard questions, often shouted from the audience or as part of interrupting officials, as the real Q&A would come way late in the meeting and was controlled by Foley, who read queries from the crowd on cards. 

There seemed to be concerns about the crowd tone, evidenced by the Sheriff’s deputies posted visibly at the entrance to the facility. 

Sheriff deputies posted outside Supervisor Katrina Foley’s Townhall. Credit: NORBERTO SANTANA, JR., Voice OF OC

Foley – who lectured the crowd for the first half hour of the gathering on her climate action plan – tried to control the room as much as she could, clearly hoping that gathering all the county bureaucrats together in one room for a town hall would help community members get their heads around how to change the narrative for the creek and California’s first state beach. 

OC Public Works officials basically told the crowd that in order to prevent flooding during storms and keep flood insurance rates stable in the area, they needed to keep the channels on the San Juan Creek clear in order to protect all the housing and commercial developments that Orange County has allowed to be placed right up to the creek. 

Foley did log a big win from the crowd when she announced that – based on her advocacy – she could guarantee that all herbicide spraying in the San Juan and Trabuco Creeks would halt immediately. 

Brent Linas, a 41-year old former Navy special operations officer, who has been leading the Creek Team and lives in San Juan Capistrano, saw the town hall and Foley’s announcement as a clear win for transparency and accountability after he was given unclear answers for months.  

Everyone on Monday night got to see what the Creek Team has been dealing with, how County of Orange officials evade straightforward questions about herbicide use. 

For three hours. 

Supervisor Katrina Foley leads discussion at town hall on herbicides in local creeks. Credit: NORBERTO SANTANA, JR., Voice OF OC

Foley – who oftentimes on Monday scolded activists over their tone and hard push for accountability – strove to brand Tuesday’s town hall as the start of finding solutions. 

Yet even she got visibly frustrated at one point with the bureaucrats from the County of Orange for their inability to just answer questions in an open manner. 

She announced that she’s also establishing an advisory committee – one that includes the Creek Team – that’s tasked with finding an alternative way to keep vegetation out of creeks.

Creek team leaders say they are taking the lead on setting up the committee, which left me wondering how this process will actually work. 

San Juan Creek near Doheny State Beach in Dana Point. Credit: NORBERTO SANTANA, JR., Voice OF OC

Creek activists note there are apparently endangered species – like Steelhead Trout and Least Bell’s Vireo – in the creek that the bureaucrats at OC Public Works aren’t happy about seeing in the waterway because, in their minds, if these animals establish themselves in the habitat, it compromises the official aim of keeping the flood control channels flowing. 

Yet it seems the protected animals are already there. 

Activists also found public records noting that county officials are relying on old environmental permits issued in 2013 to do their spraying in waterways – permits that state water board officials have just given administrative continuance to despite being long expired. 

While the permits are enforceable, there’s questions why they aren’t updated to reflect the newest understanding of local waterways – especially around issues like herbicide. 

Activists say the federal EPA looks to have these permits renewed every five years. 

At this point, Linas notes that the permits have been expired longer than they were issued for. 

How Accurate are the Environmental Tests? 

County officials also told the public on Monday night that when they spray, they take scientific samples nearby to make sure there’s acceptable levels of herbicide in the water.

That prompted Rob Beard – a 28-year-old biochemist working with the Creek Team – to interject during the town hall several times, accusing OC Public Works officials of gaming the data. 

Beard noted that many of the public records released by the County of Orange lacked effective GPS coordinates to really be able to measure where spraying occurred by contractors. 

“If they’re sampling in the wrong spot, you could be missing a lot of the herbicide and it could be giving false negatives,” Beard said in an interview after the Monday meeting. 

Moreover, he publicly accused county bureaucrats of presenting false results to calm the public. 

“When we asked again,” Beard said in an interview this week about the county providing GPS coordinates of field measurements. “They made up a document and passed it onto me,” he said, referring to an Excel spreadsheet prepared by county officials. 

Beard also notes that public records they have seen – such as a 2024 local Agricultural Commissioner investigation – show the county doesn’t properly give public notice when they spray the creekbeds.

San Juan Creek near Doheny State Beach in Dana Point. Credit: NORBERTO SANTANA, JR., Voice OF OC

I never heard any Public Works officials contest what Beard said publicly at the meeting. 

“You can see the metadata was made by someone who wasn’t a field scientist,” Beard said, adding, “I would get fired if I did that.”

He also noted that in some cases, lab operators didn’t test results of herbicide spraying soon enough to be valid. 

Bethany Nelms, 42, another Creek Team leader who lives in San Juan Capistrano also noted that OC officials don’t measure for herbicides at the mouth of the creek where it flows into Doheny State Beach, where all the kids play.

The county’s Public Health Officer, Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, tried to assure the crowd by noting they could go to the county Health Care Agency’s beach website  – to monitor such beach water conditions. 

Nelms interrupted her – exposing the county’s favorite way to look responsive by pointing the public toward nonresponsive websites – highlighting that those measurements only look at bacteria not herbicides. 

“There’s no real protection,” Nelms told me in an interview about the county’s approach. “It’s all a facade.”

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