WASHINGTON, D.C. — “Follow label instructions.” These three words are critical during planting season, especially when spring breezes cause chemical drift to be carried to neighbors’ vegetation and air space.

Will spray drift or run-off kill their lawn, trees and flowers; or even more importantly, will their children breathe in harmful chemicals?

For some concerned neighbors, the answer is not blowing in the wind. They want it stopped, and they will take farmers to court to keep it from happening.

The complaints from spray drift, discharging into state waters, GMOs, water run-off and other environmental concerns have landed several farmers in the court room and facing huge fines and even criminal confinement.

Gary Baise, an Illinois farmer and attorney at OFW Law, works with agriculture’s environmental issues specializing in the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency. He has defended clients, including farmers, in several of the leading wetlands enforcement cases under the CWA in federal courts and currently is defending several Indiana livestock farmers.

“I never dreamed something I did or my father did on the farm would be subject to a criminal indictment,” Baise said. “There is criminalization of what we think are great things.”

Several cases have been brought against farmers for applying pesticides in an unsafe manner.

In U.S. v. Wabash Valley Service Co., a neighbor videotaped drift after farmers applied pesticide with wind speed at 20 miles per hour, a violation of label precautions.

In Indiana, a mint farmer was sentenced to two years probation, eight months home detention and more than $60,000 in fines after discharging heated process water into a roadside ditch and causing the scalding death of a neighbor’s dog.

A North Carolina hog producer was found guilty of discharging hog manure from lagoons into a local creek that was dry, and it was questionable if discharge occurred into a water of the state covered by the Clean Water Act. The CEO of the Freedman Farms was sentenced to six months in prison, six months home confinement and $1.5 million in fines.

Such lawsuits and the publicity surrounding them are causing a general breach of trust in farming practices. “Farmers are going to jail,” Baise said. “This is a frightening new trend.”

He encourages farmers to follow best management practices in their operations to prevent environmental damage before any concern arises. He looks to young farmers who can square off with environmental activists.

“I’m optimistic, and I believe there are young people out there that will rise to meet these challenges,” Baise said.

Dust from normal farm practices has also come under scrutiny by the EPA.

The EPA completed in 2011 its normal five-year review of particulate matter (PM) required by the Clean Air Act. In its review, EPA considers whether there is sufficient scientific data to warrant any changes to the standard, based primarily on health effects.

In November 2011 the EPA’s Clean Air committee proposed an alternative to reduce the standard by half, but allow more days for which the level could be exceeded. This would cause many more rural areas, mostly in the Midwest, West and some Southern regions, to be non-compliant and bring on expensive and burdensome regulations.

The EPA has failed to show data that there is a causal connection between PM and health effects.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote to some senators that she will not push for a change of the standard. But lawmakers feel that legislation should be on the books to prevent EPA from changing the current air quality standard for dust for at least one year, unless EPA could show significant health impacts. The bills would also exempt “nuisance” farm dust from regulation by EPA and instead, allow states and local governments to regulate dust.

The House bill passed in December and a companion bill is now in the Senate.

More than 30 senators signed a letter to Jackson, stating, “… most Americans would agree that common sense dictates that the federal government should not regulate dust creation in farm fields and on rural roads … The scientific and technical evidence seems to agree.”

Again, Baise encourages farmers to use best management practices to control dust, including precision farming, fallowing land, organic practices, reducing number passes on fields, night harvesting, permanent crops, etc.