FATEFUL HARVEST, the True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry and a Toxic Secret

This book chronicles how a handful of farmers and a small town mayor fought against the pressure of the local chemical industries’ and area farmers to assure that the public was made aware that industrial and other hazardous wastes had been disposed in fertilizers, soil amendments and animal feeds.

The road has not been easy for any of them. The farmers lost their land, their livelihoods and their health.  Russ Sligar lost his life to heart disease and Duke Giraud to cancer.  Dennis DeYoung and his wife Marilyn left the area, and by the grace of God, are alive after each received lifesaving transplants (liver and bone marrow respectively).

Nancy Witte, an extremely talented occupational therapist, retired after 30 years from the Fairbanks School District and invested all of her life savings in the family farm.  Sadly, pressures from the agricultural community, strained family relations, and the isolation of running a dairy proved too much for this compassionate woman and she took her own life in September 2007.

There is a human price to taking a stand; sometimes the price is unbearable.