NAAA recently received a call from a Mid-Atlantic operator about an issue his company was having with a local swimming pool service business. After a heavy rain, the operator noticed his family pool was cloudy, so he called the pool service to have it check the chemical balance in the pool.

The pool company representative came and one of the questions he asked the operator’s wife was if any crop dusters were around. When she replied yes, he informed her that the cloudy pool water was due to chemicals being sprayed on local sweet corn.

The operator began checking around and discovered that several other pool owners in the area had been given the same story, leading at least one homeowner to call the state’s department of agriculture, which then had to investigate. Of course, the information was not correct, but many of the pool company’s customers may never know they were given false information and could continue to “blame it on the crop dusters.”