Photographs of the Gold Beach community

The Pitchford family waves goodbye to Dr. John Pitchford as he leaves their home in Cedar Valley, Oregon. Last October, the boys ran outside when they heard a helicopter overhead. The helicopter was spraying herbicide over private logging forest. After the spraying, the little boys couldn’t sleep; Melissa, the mother, was nauseous for 11 days and dizzy for a month; John had abdominal pain. Melissa’s mother and grandmother continue to suffer the effects of the spray. “It feels like we’re continually still battling this,” Melissa says.

Master gardener Mary Jacobs and volunteer Debianne Harpole work in the garden at Riley Creek Elementary School in Gold Beach, Oregon. Herbicide was sprayed near the school in October 2013. Some parents and administrators at the school want the timber companies to stop spraying on school days or at least to notify the school when they’ll be spraying. The school, “held together with string and wire,” says principal Tom Denning, has fallen on hard times due in part to the decrease of logging in the area.

Keith Wright stands atop a hill where he witnessed helicopters spraying herbicides across Cedar Valley, Oregon. He came into direct contact with the chemicals while on the hill and a short time later became sick.

John Burns reaches out to touch a tree that was adversely affected by herbicide spraying during October 2013 in Cedar Valley, Oregon. Burns says plant life in the path of the herbicide spray was decimated, an intended consequence of the chemicals, but some collateral damage also included healthy trees and plants that are native to the region.

John Burns manages a growing amount of documentation related to herbicide spraying in Cedar Valley, Oregon.

John Burns checks on water collected from a nearby creek on his neighbor James Aldridge's property. Burns said the unusable water contains chemicals that were sprayed across the valley, residents that don't have an underground water source face uncertainty that water on their land is safe for drinking and bathing.

Melissa Pitchford and her daughter check the stream where the family draws drinking water. After the spray, the Pitchfords filled a second refrigerator with gallons of bottled water that they drank for months, fearing their stream was contaminated.

Chuck Ott, a resident of Cedar Valley, Oregon, stands inside a greenhouse where he legally grows medical marijuana to help battle nausea and illness he suffers. He says the herbicide sprayed during logging operations in October 2013 made him sick.

James Aldridge, 46, stands in his bedroom with the various medications he is required to take for liver disease, which he says is due to herbicides that were sprayed on his land and into his water supply.

Melissa Pitchford enters the family's stable with her son in Cedar Valley, Oregon. Their two horses, panicked by the noise of a helicopter in October 2013, escaped, and when Melissa and her daughter chased after them, they gulped down air she says tasted like chemicals. By the end of the day, one of the horses was blind in one eye. Within the next few months, the other lost more than 400 pounds.

Molly, a one-year-old Spanish Paso Fino filly, became blind in one eye after helicopters sprayed herbicide in the valley.

The Pitchford family at their home in Cedar Valley, Oregon.