Spartina Project Poisons Us, Our Water, Our Wildlife With Herbicide

nerve lesions? where is a description of those?
i still have memories from years ago of california as the best example of beautiful natural lands and gorgeous healthy people.
now i picture it as home to frantic hysterical agencies spraying poisons around to kill things while the people have to stay indoors avoiding whats left of nature and treating lesions.
i guess its time to call the tourist bureau to explain why no one wants to come to california now.
but i do hope these agencies come to their senses soon, so can come back for a visit.

Wow,

What an illogical, emotion-based rant. You mention they are spraying in Estuaries, namely the San Francisco Estuary, then say they are contaminating our drinking water. Exactly how much of our drinking water comes from the Estuary? Unless some DeSal plants have been put in recently unnoticed, I’d say none.

Then a whole lot of emotion-based hysteria, name-calling, and out-of context references to non-peer reviewed information.

I don’t know how I came across this post, but if the LBAM folks are all like you, then I’ll revisit my opposition to the spraywork.

Geez!

Hi Mim,

I always prefer an informed civil debate, and will do my part to maintain that atmosphere. However, the original post made no such attempt, but used language that was meant to exploit emotion, rather than providing a reasoned source of information. My tone was in keeping with that original post.

As I said, I have gone through the website. The list of sites to be treated only includes tidal marshes of the Estuary. In fact, the language of the EIR/EIS produced by the Project goes to great lengths to mention that the Spartina grass only grows in salty tidal marshes. That map looks to me to be a very broad estimate of the areas, and they provide much more detailed maps elsewhere on the site.

My main point is that the original post dismisses out of hand the large body of evidence supporting invasive species work, IPM, and what seems to be a sizeable amount of environmental community involvement, University research, and focussed analysis of the Spartina grass project.

Does anyone using herbicides do a good job in your mind? Is there any instance where you would advocate for their use? If you answer no to both, then you are simply promoting an ideological stance, rather than an ecological or human health stance. That is my point.

Welcome to VeganReader, Tim,
First of all, I want to express that I’m truly glad that 25 years of exposure to Roundup does not appear to have affected your health. You are very lucky and I sincerely hope that your good luck continues with that.

Neither I, my family nor the majority of my readers have had such luck, however. Most of us have been poisoned by pesticides and have suffered permanent damage to our health. This loss of health has turned many of us into researchers, and through that work, we have learned that it is exactly projects like the Spartina Project that lead to countless innocent people falling quietly ill in their homes, many of whom will never lead normal lives again.

It’s understandable, that if you haven’t had the misfortune to experience this yourself, you might wonder what the fuss is all about. You’ll have to try to take it from the sick people that herbicides and pesticides are a threat to life and that, because of this, we feel fully empowered to speak and write of them as a drastic threat.

Please do take a moment to look at the map I’ve linked to in the article. You will quickly see that the Spartina Project is spraying a vast area of water including San Pablo Bay and San Francisco Bay as well as the Pacific Ocean along West Marin’s coastline. To say that the herbicide will stay in one spot and not get into our soil, our groundwater, the water we drink and the air we breathe is simply not correct, Tim. The flow of rivers, the absorption of chemicals that then come down as rainwater, the seepage of toxins into the earth…these are real things and real threats to people and wildlife.

My hope is that you will read the toxicological information I’ve provided in the article. It’s so dangerous to tell people these substances are safe.

So, again, while I am sincerely glad that you have so far managed to keep your health while using herbicides, I feel it’s so important to make you aware that use of pesticides and herbicides has sickened so many of your neighbors and will continue to sicken them until the time hopefully comes when people turn their backs on this country’s present addiction to chemical use.

In regards to the presence of a grass in our water, I am not the first to suggest that manual harvest and use of this grass could create useful, green employment for many workers. This would be the sustainable, non-toxic approach to any abundant resource people discover. Bombing an entire area of the coast of California with toxic herbicides is truly an outdated idea and not in keeping with our state going green.

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Good luck to you.
Mim

Overly strident calls against herbicides was the hallmark of the Spartina invasion in Willapa Bay,WA. Lawsuits delayed control for several years while the grass covered naturally open mudflats at an exponential rate. Massive control efforts costing millions of dollars was the result. Similar stridency was avoided in California as the Invasive Spartina Project (ISP) invited all stake-holders to the table, and had solid scientific evidence detailing the threats to the SF estuary environment posed by Spartina, primarily from the University of California, Davis. For an overview of the work accomplished by UC Davis researchers see: http://ucdavismagazine.ucdavis.edu/issues/sp05/feature_2.html

Your reference on imazapyr toxicity is put out by the “Journal of Pesticide Reform” and the “Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides” and, to put it mildly, is biased in the extreme. Some of the damages you cite occurred after animals were fed the chemical for several days/years. How about doing proper research and tracking down the references to imazapyr listed on the Invasive Spartina Project website? Unless you also mistrust all the data gathered and presented in these documents by the USDA, the Washington State Dept. of Agriculture, and a private environmental scientist.

The question is whether you think a plant like cordgrass that threatens a native species with genetic extinction, and completely changes a natural ecosystem to an unnatural one is preferable to using a low toxicity herbicide to kill it.

Dear Mim – what kind of math do they use in Mim-land? Does it require an absence of rational thinking and a belief in magic?

Clearly, you and I will never reach agreement when you compare repairing a broken ecosystem to poisoning children.

And as I have used my true name, feel free to google it and Spartina to get 10+ pages of my work on this invasion.

I am very concerned by what goes into our environment, as Debra stated that scientific studies were done by? are these scientist’s that were government funded, and why were there just one set of scientists, the chemical and petroleum industries have scientist’s who will dispute any negative effect that the chemicals have on our environment, does she know that the honey bee’s are dying off what will happen to our vegetable,fruit,floral industry, as well as all the people employed in these industries, or is she defending big business because she has a vested interest in it, or maybe she knows someone who is, sounds to me that she is blind to the world around her and enjoys her safe steel and concrete world, devoid of the sound of songbirds, or any wildlife, those who believe that the government tells the truth are in there own little fantasy world of Disney?

Welcome, Anuel,
As Debra mentioned in her comments, she has written multiple papers on the Spartina project, so we can safely assume she is professionally invested in using herbicides to kill this grass, no matter what the cost to health and life.

While I appreciated Debra taking the time to comment, her several comments make it pretty clear to both you and I that she is not willing to see the truth of the damage herbicides are doing to our environment, and that, when confronted with the truth about this, the only option she saw left to her was to attempt to make me (the author) look foolish. Too often, money is of greater concern to people than honesty, and I’m afraid Debra is simply not ready to take a straighter path in her life yet. We can only hope that one day she will face up to the damage herbicides are really doing to her own planet and make the firm decision that she will not support self-destructive actions.

Thanks for taking the time to express your concerns here. Your comment is appreciated.

Mim

Keith Stavrum wrote a message that didn’t get through, then I tried to replicate his thoughts and mine didn’t go through. I’m on a different computer now. To paraphrase what I think we both said: check out our web site, and link to our blog. We are engaged in serious lawsuits the first against the State of Wa. re the chemical drift on our oyster and clam beds as a result of the spraying of spartina, and recently a complaint has been filed against the Pacific County Weed Board because of their decision to deny us the ability to eradicate the spartina on our tidelands by mowing– stating that the only way to eradicate spartina is with pesticides and they only have two years of money left to do it. The commercial oystermen who have been spraying carbaryl in Willapa Bay since as far back at least as 1965, joined the spartina eradication melee early on even though the grass presented no problems for the oyster industry. In fact every projected spartina infraction was not based on any science at all. However, with all the elected officials like our US Rep Congressman Baird, Sen. Murray, all of Pacific County officials state and local, and Norm Dicks chairman of the Environmental appropriations committee bringing over 5 years of earmarks, 1.5 million a year for spartina eradication, it was the game to be in. Baird, said that the spartina eradication program in Willapa Bay would be the poster child for the National Federal program for getting rid of invasive species. Lord Help us.
And even though the powers that be including the Gov. Gregoire describe Willapa bay as pristine, it no longer has its once abundant natural oyster set, there are numerous dead zones, no crab, probably no real fish, the oyster seeds don’t survive, and I’m certanly not interested in eating the oysters that have filtered all of these poisons but still as oysters tend to do– survive. But we have a new and promising Lands Commissioner, Peter Landmark who doesn’t seem to be so fond of pesticides. You should google him and tell him that spraying spartina with pesticides is not just about Willapa Bay or the Moby Dick Hotel, or Fritzi Cohen. This addiction to pesticides to go after invasive species has spread throughout the West Coast. And as a result the use of pesticides has caused a real threat to the environment and the public health, the air, the land, the sea, far beyond any threat that has ever really been proven against the demonized so called invasive species. This is the 200th birthday of Darwin, so lets think evolution. This is the 100th birthday anniversary of Rachel Carson and lets reflect on how long it took everyone to realize the dangers of chemical pesticides.