Spartina Project Poisons Us, Our Water, Our Wildlife With Herbicide
Tuesday 15 Jul 2008 | LBAM Spray Bay Area
Dear Readers,
We’re still trying to get settled here, and I am trying to catch up on where we are all at with the LBAM spray program. This month, residents of much of the LBAM spray zone have another toxic assault to contend with that my friends at Don’t Spray California have alerted me to - the Spartina Project.
I am new to this, but I hope to give a quick summary of what is set to begin this week. This is an outrageous attack on public health as well as our already-burdened habitat.
What Is The Spartina Project?
Like so many of these pesticide programs, the Spartina Project has classified something as ‘invasive’. In this case, it’s 4 species of cord grass. And, it will come as little surprise to any of my readers that once some official group has designated a plant, animal or insect ‘invasive’ their immediate next step is to start killing things. The Spartina Project was set in motion in 2000, resulting in years of incredibly toxic pesticide exposure for all of us. It is funded by CALFED Bay-Delta Program, United States Fish and Wildlife Service Coastal Program, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the California State Coastal Conservancy.
Who Is Being Sprayed By The Spartina Project?
The people, wildlife, water and lands of the following counties are being coated with toxic herbicides in the Spartina project:
Alameda County
Marin County
San Francisco County
Sonoma County
Solano County
Contra Costa County
San Mateo County
Santa Clara County
View A Map Of The Spartina Spray Zone
What Is Being Sprayed On Us?
The primary poisons being sprayed in the 8 Bay Area counties are Imazapyr and Glyphosate.
Imazapyr is an atrocious herbicide which causes permanent damage to the eye and irritates skin. Imazapyr has been observed to cause cancer of the brain, thyroid and adrenal system and tumors in animals. When Imazapyr breaks down, it turns into several dangerous substances. One is quinolinic acid which is an irritant to the eyes, skin and respiratory system and, most disturbingly, is a neurotoxin which causes nerve lesions.
Imazapyr contaminates soil and water and remains in the habitat for years after an application. It destroys plants by attacking them at the DNA level. Imazapyr is manufactured by American Cynamid Company and sold under the labels Assault, Chopper and Arsenal. This PDF gives in depth information about this incredibly toxic herbicide to which Bay Area families are being chronically exposed.
Glyphosate is the main ingredient in the repugnant herbicide Roundup. Apart from being an eye and skin irritant, Glyphosate studies have revealed causation of tumors of the kidney, thyroid, testicles, and the adrenal cortex in animals. Glyphosate is ranked as the 3rd highest cause of herbicide/pesticide injury in the United States. Here is further information about Glyphosate.
Starting this week of July, Bay Area families will be unforgivably exposed to these incredibly dangerous chemicals via spraying from airplanes, boats and backpack applications. If you visited the map, above, you will see that our entire watershed is being contaminated with these herbicides. This is our drinking water, the drinking water of our wildlife, the substance of our ocean beaches and the rivers and marshes we walk along. Contamination of these vital life resources is totally unacceptable.
Backwards Organizations - Moronic Ideas
It is simply agonizing to learn that this irreversible damage to us and our water supply is being done by a group of neighbors. They call themselves the San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project and it makes you want to tear your hair out when you realize that any group with the word ‘Estuary’ in their name has herbicides in their hands. Spraying chemicals in water is an idiotic, backward and criminally stupid thing to do. These people should not be allowed anywhere near our ocean, rivers, bays, estuaries or marshes with their 20th century toxins and totally out-of-date concepts of environmental stewardship.
Both our bodies and our planet are made up of some 70% of water. What we do to the water we do to ourselves. What is coming out of the tap comes from the water these people are dumping carcinogenic herbicides into. When we ingest this contaminated water, we are being poisoned by the San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project. This is not about some grass growing by the waterside. This is about children drinking and breathing poisonous chemicals, this is about mother and father getting cancer, this is about brother and sister developing environmental and autoimmune diseases, this about aunt and uncle become MCS sufferers. This is about the human family being permanently damaged by the practices of chemical manufacturers and chemical-dependent organizations.
It is simply ludicrous that any 21st century group would claim to be protecting habitat by pouring poison on it. These antique methods do not fit our modern understanding of the interconnectedness of life. We need to rid the SF Bay Area of a grass so that…what? The habitat is better? What does it matter if we are Spartina-free if all of us are dropping dead of chemically-induced illnesses? What does it matter if endangered species’ watershed is grass-free if all of the endangered species are dead from chemical injury? Can’t anyone in the San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project think their outdated plan a few steps forward and realize that disease and death are the fruits of their actions?
What To Do About Spartina
Unemployment is on the rise here in California. If the grass is truly such a terrible concern to groups like the San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project, they should request a government grant to employ field workers to remove the grasses manually. Go ahead and give them boats. Let them travel the waterways harvesting the grass with shovels and machetes. Perhaps the materials could then be recycled into rugs, flooring, baskets, paper or other materials for our benefit. And no one would be poisoned. Not the workers, not our families, our wildlife or our water supply. This is the kind of plan 21st century people need to embrace. Not the ignorant, suicidal chemical practices of the past.
If you live in the SF Bay Area or have loved ones who do, please contact the people responsible for this poisoning and tell them you intend to fight their unwanted and uneducated activities:
Peggy Olofson
Project Director
prolofson@spartina.org
Maxene Spellman
Project Manager, State Coastal Conservancy
mspellman@scc.ca.gov
Erik Grijalva
Field Operations Manager
ekgrijalva@spartina.org
Drew Kerr
Assistant Field Operations Manager
dwkerr@earthlink.net
Ingrid Hogle
Monitoring Program Manager
ibhogle@spartina.org
Stephanie Ericson
Administrative Assistant
sericson@spartina.org
Phone: (510) 548-2461
Tuesday 15 Jul 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area |
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.
Hi Solstice,
Sorry I didn’t see your comment sooner. I’ve linked to the toxicology information I could find in the article above. If you follow these links, you’ll see what I found out about the herbicides being used.
It’s just insane…there’s a group called Friends of the Petaluma River with a website showing all these people playing in the river and fishing from it. Who on earth would want to eat fish covered with herbicide?
Unsurprisingly, the backers of the Spartina Project are assuring everyone that the herbicides are so safe, you could ‘douse a small child with them.’
Where do they get these people to say these things???
Mindboggling.
Mim
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!
Welcome to VeganReader, EKG,
Did you take a look at the map of the herbicide application areas? Please look and you will see that this project isn’t spraying ‘an estuary’. It is spraying toxic herbicides in virtually every body of water connected to the SF Bay, San Pablo Bay and the entire region of the Pacific Ocean on the shores of West Marin.
Please, do take a look at that and perhaps you will begin to understand why people would be concerned about all the water in their lands being sprayed with poison.
I do welcome debate here, so long as the tone is kept respectful. If you feel that I or one of your fellow readers has made a mistake, you are absolutely welcome to offer a correction, based upon different facts that you have discovered. We are all here to share and learn in an effort to protect our families from toxic assault.
Many of our readers have lost their health due to exposure to pesticides/herbicides/environmental toxins. I would be the last person to suggest that people should not speak with emotion regarding the loss of their health. That being said, I would assert that my above article is based upon the facts I have linked to, and I hope that you will follow those links and see that there is good cause here for both anger and action.
Mim
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.
Hi Vegan Reader,
I certainly come from a different background than you. I’ve worked in the landscape and gardening industry for over 25 years, and have been working with and around Round-up (glyphospate) for said time span. I’ve never had any health problems, or known anybody in the industry that has developed problems, that could be linked to glyphosphate use. One of the reasons the stuff is so expensive is that it is a safe product, especially compared with what used to be available.
Your articles do come across as inflammatory, and as such, I don’t feel I can trust any of the information you provide(though my friends in Marin appreciate your work). I know that water does not flow uphill, so that anything done in the estuary will not make it’s way upstream to our reservoirs. “Incredibly toxic pesticide exposure” and counties “coated with toxic herbicides” are just not actual facts. I can imagine what you may have said if you’d seen me spot-spraying weeds around an office building. I am judicious in my use of chemicals. Yes, the studies are out there, and I know the properties of the compounds I use. I refrain from the use of pesticides (which are not herbicides) as they are harmful to the environment,and there are alternatives, such as your ant invasion remedies. I believe that if you want to actually interest people in your concerns, stick with the facts, and don’t try to engage them through pure emotion and reactionism. We’ve all had enough of that these past 8 years.
I have been doing landscape maintenance for a property alongside Arrowhead Marsh in Alameda for about 18 years. I have watched the Spartina (I didn’t know what it was)establish itsef along the shoreline path near the Aeolian Yacht Club, where it simply did not exist before. Within a ten year time span, it took over and clogged the mudflats, and started extending into the waters, even encroaching into the yacht club marina. It reminded me of the same problems we have in gardens with bamboo and Bermuda grass.
When it died back, I got curious and discovered the Spartina Project. From what I’ve read, they’re making the best of a difficult situation. From what I’ve seen, this grass could cause some drastic changes to the SF bay shoreline, and, excepting for rampant development, I really like how it is now, and want it to stay that way.
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
*Note from the Editor -
One of the previous commenters on this article attempted to leave a second comment which was accidentally deleted by our system. Vegan Reader apologizes for the deletion. If this was your comment and you would like to repost, we will gladly reprint it.
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 Debra,
Thank you for sharing your views on this subject.
In answer to your question, yes, it would be preferable to have an ecosystem changed and plants destroyed by the natural invasion of a grass rather than permanently poisoning that ecosystem, all water, all animals, all plants and the air with toxic herbicides.
Please think for a moment about Marin County being the nation’s biggest cancer hotspot. Think about children being born across the country with autism every minute. Think about anyone you know or love who is suffering from chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, MCS, MS or other environmentally-related diseases. Think about the fact that there is literally no safe water left to drink in America without the most extreme chemical treatments and ask yourself the question you have posed.
Could ANYTHING justify dumping further chemical toxins into our water, into our land, our skies and our bodies…let alone the growth of a grass being seen as justification for such egregious chemical poisoning of our environment?
Whether studies are prepared by the USDA or the JPR, it doesn’t really matter in in the year 2008. Human beings have learned that toxic chemicals cause disease and death in the human body. There are no 2 ways around this, as far as I am concerned, and I am ready to condemn any group that chooses to ignore this hard-learned fact in order to forward their aims, whether those aims are killing plants, insects or animals.
Manual removal of the cordgrass, if it truly presents the threat that has been assigned to it, is the only environmentally-friendly way to approach this situation. Poisoning children should not be an alternative anyone would actually support.
Please, think about that equation.
Thank You.
Mim
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.
Hello Again Debra,
Since you’ve asked, Mim-land is planet Earth, and it’s your Earth, too. You can call dumping herbicides into our environment ‘repairing an ecosystem’ if that somehow makes it sound alright, but I’m afraid it’s you who may be guilty of magic thinking if you don’t believe such actions are poisoning us.
Where do the chemicals, go, Debra? Once you’ve dumped them into the water, where do they go? The answer is that they remain here with us permanently, in our atmosphere and in the makeup of our planet.
Are you aware of the fact that DDT is oozing out of the melting polar ice cap? Sure, it’s been many decades since they made it illegal here in the U.S., and no one ever sprayed it on the ice, but there it is, nonetheless.
Where will your herbicides go, after you’ve polluted California with them? Certainly not ‘away’, as the manufacturers of such chemicals would perhaps like us to believe. They remain here with us, causing disease and untimely death.
This is not only rational, it is the truth, and no number of papers anyone writes, and no clever turns of phrase about repairing eco-systems can triumph over the basic scientific fact that what we put into the environmet stays with us, in our soil, our clouds, our rainfall our water and our air.
So, yes, indeed, by supporting the use of toxic chemicals in California, you are supporting the poisoning not only of today’s children, but of the children of all future generations.
Please think about that.
Mim