Judge Says Pickers Can Live In Tents

An experimental program that allows migrant cherry harvesters to live in orchard tent camps can continue this summer, a judge ruled in denying an injunction.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Daniel J. Benschauer ruled Monday in Olympia that allowing the state Department of Health’s provisional tent program to proceed this summer would not cause irreparable harm to farm workers.

Failure to get an injunction, however, does not halt a lawsuit brought by two farm workers who claim their health was put at risk by conditions in a temporary work camp licensed by the Health Department last year.

The suit challenges the Health Department’s authority to conduct the licensing program, which is to begin its third and final year during this summer’s harvest.

The Health Department created the program after several years of study.

The agency provisionally licensed 32 camps last year, most of them in the Wenatchee Valley.