This week, former presidential adviser, Karl Rove, has been the subject of international headlines, greeting the demands that he appear before Congress with a queer and deafening silence. According to his lawyer, Rove has been ordered by the White House (the Bush Administration) not to obey the subpoena or give testimony about the possible politicization of the Department of Justice. Congress may have to send out the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Rove and bring him to a hearing, no matter what President Bush wants.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Senator Barbara Boxer convene a hearing, the subject of which was the profound corruption that has rotted away the core of the Environmental Protection Agency. Special interests, dirty money and corrupt politicians have changed the mission of the EPA from being one of protecting public and environmental health to being one of protecting the profits of chemical manufacturers and polluters. Strangely, the head of the EPA did not show up for the hearing, despite requests that he be present to answer questions regarding the obvious criminal activity going on in his agency. Again, there was a very strange silence in that room, filled with senators and media but lacking any testimony from the head of the EPA.

Here in California, we have the same silence ringing in our ears. With the threat of a biochemical assault hanging over the heads of 7 millions citizens, people are demanding answers to their questions and are being met with silence.

I want to know why U.S. Congressman Sam Farr’s direct demand that USDA Secretary, Ed Schafer, and Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Bruce Knight, explain to him how the LBAM was classified as a class A pest in the first place has still not received a reply over a month later.

I want to know why Major Tim Wilcox, whose baby nearly died after being forced by the CDFA to inhale Checkmate Pesticide in 2007, has never received the slightest acknowledgment from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to whom he wrote, pleading for help.

I want to know why neither Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Senator Carol Migden and Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s letters to the USDA and other officials have received no reply.

I want to know why the Monterey Bay Aquarium refused to let their neighbors speak to their staff regarding the dangers of spraying Monterey Bay, and why, even after hundreds of sea birds died from Checkmate spray, the aquarium has maintained a mysterious silence about the poisoning.

I want to know why not one of the 43 Californian Audubon Society chapters I’ve contacted cares that birds have been and will be killed by blanket aerial spraying of California. I want to know why I have not received a single concerned reply.

What can you add to my list?

The policy of silence in California is deadly. Hundreds of families have already been sickened, untold wildlife has died, and our air and water has been polluted with biochemicals and microscopic plastic which causes human fatality. Again and again, our demands for reasonable answers, for rational explanations as to the logic behind this assault on California are met with, at best, lies and at worst, utter silence.

It would appear that what they are experiencing in Washington D.C., with a president who can order someone to defy congress and a host of agencies that are sweltering in sickly corruption, is happening across the United States.

Let it be remembered that when the Ford Pinto was put out on the market, the manufacturers knew that a certain percentage of purchasers would die because of a malfunction in the car’s construction. But, Ford did the math. And, they realized that the total they would have to pay out in lawsuits was less than the total profits they would make before the car was recalled. So, they made a choice. The innocent people who would die were expendable, because a good margin of profit could still be accrued by releasing the car.

And, isn’t this what we are seeing in our nation and state? For whatever dark and unspeakable reason, the profit being made off the illegal spraying of human beings makes sense to a few criminals. When infants like little Jack Wilcox go into respiratory failure, when infants die after 2, 3, 100, 450 exposures to this deadly pesticide, perhaps a few dollars will be paid out in lawsuits if anyone is committed enough to actually get a ruling against the perpetrators. The money that will have to go out, however, cannot compare to the billions coming in for CDFA and Stewart Resnick, manufacturer of this poison.

They need only bide their time. Keep mum. Spray the people. Scrape away their piles of money. Deal with some small consequences later. In this life, silence is serving them well.

When citizen Mike DeLay traveled back to his childhood home of Reedley, California to explain to the region’s farmers how his central coast community had been gravely sickened by the aerial spraying of Checkmate in 2007, his audience listened with visible discomfort. DeLay was not the first emissary sent to them to talk about the light brown apple moth - the California Department of Food and Agriculture had already been there.

Spewing their infamous misinformation regarding the ‘voracious moth’, CDFA managed to so frighten the growers with threats of mass agricultural destruction and costly quarantines that the City of Reedley adopted the first and only resolution in support of spraying deadly chemicals on the families of Monterey and Santa Cruz counties and the densely populated SF Bay Area.

Mind you, this toxic, enforced spraying will not be happening over the homes of Reedley farmers and their children. They will not be inhaling carcinogens, mutagens, endocrine disrupting chemicals, crime-inducing synthetic moth pheromones and deadly PM10 pollution. But millions of their customers all along the California coast will, and in the end, City of Reedley growers have decided that’s preferable to potential financial penalties due to the presence of the LBAM in the state.

Bottom line: their income is more important than their customers’ lives.

Reedley is known as the World’s Fruit Basket. The region’s economy depends on delivering a variety of fruits to the national and international market. When faced with CDFA’s strong-arm threats of quarantine, the city made a moral choice: spray humans so growers won’t be penalized. Unfortunately, the City of Reedley made their decision before hearing from Mike DeLay. Unfortunately, Reedley’s growers have been victimized. Unfortunately, they have been duped.

When you read the text of the resolution (see page 69 of the document), it becomes abundantly clear that Reedley’s growers have been lied to and basically blackmailed by the CDFA. The resolution hinges on the following pieces of tragic misinformation:

1) That LBAM could cause billions of dollars in damage.

In fact, even CDFA admits that LBAM has done no damage and California’s most respected UC scientists predict it never will do any damage here. Further, it is important to note that the LBAM is unlikely to make it to the Central Valley as it lives in cool moist habitats like the coast - not hot, dry habitats like the City of Reedley and surrounding growing regions.

2) That LBAM is an eradicable pest

In fact, specialists in invasion biology have repeatedly tried to explain to CDFA that the harmless moth is simply too widespread to be eradicated. As is the case with most of CDFA’s scores of ‘eradication’ programs, extinction of the moth here is unlikely to result even after years of spraying. The track record of the CDFA is all you need to see to determine that they have failed in the majority of their so-called ‘eradication’ attempts over the past several decades.

3) That Checkmate, the spray product, is less harmful than other pesticides

In fact, Checkmate has, to date, caused both acute and chronic illness in Central Coast families, nearly killed a formerly-healthy infant, killed hundreds of birds, killed cats, dogs, rabbits, fish and honey bees. Checkmate causes illness and death.

4) That OEHHA determined that the illnesses and death which ensued after the 2007 spraying were not connected to the spraying

In fact, OEHHA admitted that they were unable to determine whether or not the spraying caused the documented illnesses and death. It is unsurprising that OEHHA was unable to state for certain that the biochemical spray sickened and killed people and animals - rather than investigating the reports by contacting the victims and their physicians, OEHHA threw 90% of the claims out and refused to contact a single person on the Central Coast. Little wonder they were unable to put a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the connection between spraying people with pesticide and pesticide-induced illnesses which match, point for point, the ingredients in Checkmate.

Familiar Language
If the points in the above resolution sound eerily familiar to you regarding a moth that devastates agriculture and a pesticide that is perfectly safe to spray on human beings, it is because you have encountered the exact language in the Reedley resolution in the mouth of Ag. Secretary A.G. Kawamura. I don’t think it would be wrong to question whether the City of Reedley resolution was, in fact, authored by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. CDFA held a secret, closed-door meeting at the City of Reedley Community Center on May 14th, 2008. The evidence of the lies told there to farmers may be found in the text of the resolution which passed a few days later.

One can only wonder how the victimized farmers felt when, the very next day, Mike DeLay showed up on their doorstep with concrete information indicating that growers had just been fooled by the CDFA machine in a brand new effort to pit farmers against their customers. Nobody likes to be duped.

“Some were troubled and most did not want to believe what I was saying,” said Mike DeLay of his meeting with the growers. “I believe it created a moral problem for them and they did not want to be put in that position. I believe the farmers are, for the most part, very morally minded and good people. I was asked by one grower just before the meeting ended, demanding an answer of what I would do if in their shoes? It was clear to me that he was upset and was struggling for the right thing to do but was afraid of losing his farm. I told them that knowing what I know about LBAM, I believe the central valley does not have any risk of LBAM as it can not survive there due to hot climate and I would never support aerial spraying anywhere, ever.”

It can’t have been pleasant to listen to the mild-mannered, obviously truthful DeLay explain how he and his wife were horrifically sickened by Checkmate, how many of their friends and neighbors are still terribly sick half a year later, how baby Jack Wilcox is now being kept breathing by means of corticosteroids after his lungs were damaged by the enforced spray. It can’t have been pleasant to stand behind a resolution, passed 24 hours earlier, that asserts that growers will protect agriculture at the cost of human lives.

What the City of Reedley Has Done
It’s imperative to state first that the 7 million people of coastal California who are set to be sprayed with deadly and secret chemicals in 2008 actually understand what happened in Reedley. Kawamura and his colleagues have been here, too, trying to scare us into believing that the light brown apple moth would eat just about every green thing in the state. We know how convincing these agents are. We know how skillfully they twist statements about harm and safety. We understand what happened in the City of Reedley.

But now it’s time for the Reedley growers to extend that same courtesy back to us. Please understand, we are your customers. You have just passed a resolution that says your apples and oranges are more important than our children’s lives. We have supported you with our dollar, but we aren’t going to support farmers who ally themselves with criminals. CDFA has now been convicted twice of breaking the law by creating their false LBAM ‘emergency’. They have been found guilty of violating CEQA. These are not honest or law-abiding citizens. They are deceitful law-breakers. And Reedley farmers have just linked arms with them. You are standing in the company of California’s very worst public and environmental offenders.

We can’t support that.

We implore Reedley’s farmers to withdraw their resolution, now that actual facts have been put into their hands about the harmlessness of this negligible bug and the very real threat to life posed by the aerial spraying of Checkmate over urban areas. Baby Jack Wilcox’s life is more important than your fruit, isn’t it? What do you think will happen to this 1 year old boy if CDFA sprays him again? Do you really support this happening?

And, if humanitarian concerns have somehow ceased to rule the actions of the farmers of the City of Reedly, then they must at least consider these 2 outcomes.

1) Support spraying us, and we will be forced to boycott you. We are not going to give money to people who pass resolutions that support the biochemcial killing of our children, spouses, parents and neighbors.

2) Support spraying us, and we will sicken and die. You cannot sell fruit to dead people. Killing off your customer base is not a viable marketing strategy.

What the City of Reedley has done is to pass the one and only resolution in the state that applauds the violation of the Constitutional tenets which defend residents from human experimentation without consent. Some 25 cities in the spray zone have now passed resolutions adamantly opposing the poisoning of millions of Californians, their pets, wildlife, food, air and watershed. What the City of Reedley has done is to fall victim to the fear-mongering tactics of CDFA, buying into the deceptive mirage of California devastated by a negligible leafroller moth. What the City of Reedley has done, sadly, is to play right into the dirty hands of A.G. Kawamura, allowing themselves to be bullied and pitted against their very own customers.

Justice here would be the farmers storming the offices of CDFA, demanding at the tops of their lungs to know why they were tricked, demanding to see the science which ‘proves’ that their crops are under threat, demanding to know why CDFA thinks growers can be used as pawns and played for fools.

Reedley farmers lacked information until Mike DeLay came to town. Now they have it. And now, customers are waiting to see if they will rewrite their resolution in order to protect our health and rights, or if we will be forced to enact a boycott of the City of Reedley’s growers. Support us and we will support you. We have a common opponent in the odious CDFA.

Since the spraying began on the Central Coast in 2007, people have been asking what the synthetic pheromone in Checkmate does to people and animals. We already know that the other elements in the spray are carcinogenic, mutagenic and endocrine disruptive…in numerous cases causing Central Coast women to experience extremely disturbing reproductive health effects.

But what about the synthetic pheromone itself? What happens to humans who are forced to inhale, eat and drink this chemical?

Please, do not fail to read this article regarding the effect of synthetic insect pheromones on humans and large mammals, published by Professor Joe Cummins and Sam Burcher of the Institute of Science in Society.

As this eye-opening article states, “bureaucrats are using the absence of evidence as evidence of the absence of harm.”

Further:

It appears that the CDPR has not been entirely honest in expressing their opinion of the aerial spray mixture (Checkmate). They seem to have neglected the well documented toxicity of some spray additives. This has resulted in the reluctance to fully evaluate the impact of the aerial spray on a very large population exposed to the spray. The evidence on the toxicity of the spray additives was clear while the toxicity of the synthetic pheromones is not yet thoroughly studied. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that the synthetic insect pheromones may also be active in mammals and probably in humans. In the fullness of time, it is likely that the synthetic insect hormones will be seen to have behavioural and cellular impacts on vertebrates and humans. Presently, these impacts have been documented in a few cases, but the field is advancing rapidly. Male sexual aggression should be considered a marker and evaluated from police records in the communities sprayed with insect pheromone from the air.

I am literally horrified to understand that exposure to the synthetic pheromone in Checkmate may cause aggressive sexual behaviors in men. What may be the toll of assaults on the innocent after a decade or more of constant, enforced spraying???

I want to state for the record that I have NEVER been duped by CDFA’s claims that the synthetic pheromone was harmless to people. But, like everyone else, my focus has been mainly on the other ingredients and the PM10 pollution of the microcapsules. The time has come to confront CDFA about the damage they are doing with the ‘active’ ingredient in the spray, and as the authors of this piece indicate, it is starting to become very clear that exposure to this ingredient may have horrific consequences for society.

This article needs to be on the desk of every public official in California. I have already been dizzy with fear over the physical dangers of flying airplanes at low altitudes hundreds of times in city landscapes…but if the substance sprayed induces criminal behavior in people? How does California intend to deal with this? How?

What:

Don’t Spray California and Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists” present Who’s Afraid of the Light Brown Apple Moth?

Download the Flier for Complete Details

*This is a scent-free event.

From LBAMSpray.com:

USDA EA Public Comment Period is Due NOW!

- San Jose to be sprayed with Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki - BT [comments should be received no later than May 23, 2008]

- Sonoma will be subjected to contamination with toxic twist ties [comments should be received no later than May 30, 2008]

- Pescadero, California (June Treatment) [comment should be received no later than June 20, 2008]

The time to make your public comments as part of the Environmental Assessment is now.

Who to Contact:

U.S. Department of Agriculture
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
Plant Protection and Quarantine
Emergency and Domestic Programs Emergency Management
4700 River Road, Unit 134
ATTN: Carole Johnson
Riverdale, MD 20737–1236
Carole.R.Johnson@usda.gov

Osama El-Lissy
Director, Emergency Management
Emergency and Domestic Programs
Animal Plant Health Inspection Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
4700 River Rd. Unit 134
Riverdale, MD 20737
Osama.a.el-lissy@aphis.usda.gov

CC your comments to:
AgSec@usda.gov

jrains@cdfa.ca.gov

Vegan Reader’s Letter Regarding Toxic Twist Ties in Sonoma:

Dear Sir,
I am writing to take the opportunity of the call for public comments regarding the proposed treatment of Sonoma in California for the Light Brown Apple Moth.

I was very concerned, upon reading the proposal, that guarantees of human and environmental safety appear to be based on the concept that the twist ties will only be present for a given time and that they will then be removed. This is not a sensible argument for safety, as clearly, public concern hinges on the time during which the ties will be in use - not when they will be taken away.

I would like to list my concerns regarding the contamination of Sonoma with Isomate-LBAM Plus twist ties.

1) The twist ties are being placed in the habitat of wild birds, wildlife and children. Every day the twist ties are present in the environment is an opportunity for birds, wildlife and children to come in contact with them. To touch them, play with them, get the chemicals in their mouths and eyes.

2) According to the Material Safety Data Sheet for the twist ties, they are considered an eye and skin irritant, and contact with them requires calling Poison Control or a Doctor. Unfortunately, because 38% of the ingredients in which the twist ties are soaked are being kept a secret from the public, neither the doctor nor poison control will be able to accurately determine what a child, pet or wild animal has been exposed to, causing chemical injury and illness. This is clearly not safe and the lack of transparency regarding the chemical makeup of the twist ties displays a disturbing disregard for public or environmental health.

3) If a child, pet, wild bird or animal is poisoned or injured by the twist ties, the MSDS instructs the responsible party to present the product package to the doctor. Of course, residents and tourists in the twist tie zone will not have access to the packaging of the twist ties, so again, cause of chemical injury will be impossible for a physician, paramedic or vet to determine.

4) The MSDS says that the ingredients in Isomate-LBAM Plus twist ties must not be applied to water or areas where water surface is present. In other words, you must not put it near creeks, ponds, coasts, reservoirs, rivers, or any other type of watershed. The sheet says do not contaminate water when disposing of this product. From this, we understand that Isomate-LBAM PLUS twist ties contaminate water. As you know, there are several creeks and important watershed sources in this area of Sonoma. CDFA would be violating the MSDS by applying these products where their chemicals will get into the watershed. Rain is an obvious vehicle for the chemicals on the twist ties getting into groundwater, creeks and other watershed bodies. Less obvious is the danger of the ties, themselves, being removed from trees by wild animals like inquisitive raccoons or birds. The ties may be dropped on the ground and, from there, directly into bodies of water. Again, CDFA is intending to violate the MSDS by placing 250 of these contaminating twist ties per acre in regions where water is present.

5) As a long-time birder and author of one of Sonoma County’s key birding publications, I feel it is imperative to add that I am seriously alarmed by a proposal which introduces toxins and irritants into wild bird habitat. Many of our wild bird populations have been cut in numbers by 50% or more over the past couple of decades due to chemical exposure and habitat loss. Trees, bushes and fences are vital life habitat for birds. It will be the nature of birds to investigate the twist ties which will festoon their breeding, perching and nesting areas. Certain species, like the Western Bluebird which lives in the quarantine zone and which is only just now beginning to recover from near-extinction due to DDT, are likely to view man-made materials in their habitat as potential nesting material. Diminished and endangered birds may pry the twist ties from their hangers and take them back to their nests, thus exposing vulnerable hatchlings to dangerous chemicals. Chemical injury is not merely a threat to the physical health of birds, but chemical injuries to the eyes also increase the likelihood of death by predation. A bird with burned, blurred or damaged eyes loses its ability to protect itself from predators, and of course, unlike human beings, wild birds cannot flush their eyes with water in an attempt to relieve pain or chemical injury. Introducing toxins like Isomate-LBAM plus will, in my educated opinion, lead to increased risk of disease and death for our already-threatened wild bird populations. This is not acceptable.

6) LBAM Isomate Plus twist ties present a danger to children who climb trees or who will be walking or playing around the toxic product. Children may pick up twist ties that have been pulled out of trees by wildlife, or they may simply handle them walking past shrubs, fences and bushes. An additional concern is that humans will be walking on ground into which the listed and secret ingredients of the ties have leached via rain or other vehicles. The chemicals will then be tracked into homes on the shoes. The chemicals will then be transferred from shoes to the carpet where infants play. Infants may become dangerously ill without parents or physicians having any way of determining of the cause because of this accidental tracking of toxins into the home.

7) Isomate-LBAM Plus twist ties are an unregistered product that has been approved for use in California only. It has not gone through the normal battery of tests required of registered products. I find it extremely disturbing that a portion of Sonoma will be blanketed with a chemical product which has not been tested for acute or long term effects on human or environmental health. This is a negligent and dangerous disservice to residents and public agencies should not be allowed to discount public health in their quest for profits.

8 ) The above reason should be sufficient cause for choosing not to infect human or animal habitat with known and secret chemicals. However, I will also add that it is the opinion of numerous eminent UC scientists, invasion biologist and entomologists that eradication of the light brown apple moth is not feasible in California. CDFA has recently admitted that the moth has been here for at least 6 or 7 years, despite their earlier insistence that it arrived here last year. In that time, the LBAM has done zero damage to crops and is considered a negligible bug everywhere else it lives in the world. According to UC scientists, not being funded by the USDA, the light brown apple moth is not only of no threat to agriculture, but it is also much too widespread to make it a candidate for eradication. Rather, we can rely on natural predators like birds and bats to keep populations of this harmless leaf roller moth at healthy levels…so long as we do no injure or kill those natural predators with chemicals. As the people of California have learned, the CDFA is conducting several scores of so-called ‘eradication’ programs that have been going on for more than 20 years! They are attempting to exterminate insect populations which cannot be exterminated, and in so doing, are exposing millions of humans and billions of creatures to body burdens of serious and fatal toxins. It is the considered opinion of UC experts that CDFA will fail to eradicate the LBAM, just as they have failed to eradicate the majority of the insects they claim to be exterminating, but for which they are receiving billions of dollars in federal funding. The LBAM program is unnecessary, not based in sound science and a severe danger to public and environmental health. By contrast, the little light brown apple moth represents no danger to humans, our food or water supply. It is CDFA, not LBAM, that is the public menace.

I request that my comments be registered as part of the Environmental Assessment. Thank you.
Sincerely,
&etc

Last week, Stop the Spray’s founder, John Russo, wrote a piece that was published in the California Progress Report regarding a new strategy for halting aerial spraying without consent. From the article:

StopTheSpray.org is already evaluating ballot initiatives and other measures necessary to curtail the power of the CDFA to endanger the health and human rights of people in California. Today we enter the next phase of our legislative battle to recognize the right of consent: We have formed a team to work with the authors of the bills, their legislative teams and other legislators to ensure the people’s right to determine what happens to their own bodies is respected and is a key component to every decision involving pesticide spray.

Apparently, the idea of Californians demanding that their constitutional right to safety and consent be upheld was so threatening to CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura that he felt impelled to author a reply which was subsequently published in the California Progress Report.

It’s basically a recycled version of what he sent to the SF Chronicle last month, accusing opponents of the spray of spreading fear and misinformation opposing the wonderful healthiness of inhaling carcinogenic pesticides. Apparently, 24 cities and 2 county boards, respected independent doctors and UC scientists, mayors, senators, representatives, city supervisors and millions of Californians are just plain wrong: it really IS safe to breathe pesticide! Or, at least, Kawamura seems to think so.

Apart from his bizarre conclusion that it’s okay to spray toxic chemicals and PM10 pollution into the lungs of infants, mothers, sick folks and the general population, the rusty barge that is A.G. Kawamura has long since left the harbors of truth in his obsessive quest to get those pesticide planes flying over urban cities. He is simply lying about nearly everything he says, and I believe you will feel as vindicated as I do reading Registered Nurse and Albany Mayor, Robert Lieber, hand A.G. Kawamura his hat. From the article:

Mr. Secretary, it is time to look in the mirror. You and your department are the primary source of misinformation and fear tactics.

Lieber goes on to refute half a dozen of Kawamura’s downright lies regarding the safety, the testing, the history of the spray and the habits of the light brown apple moth. His statements are science-based, unlike Kawamura’s and he is summarizing what Californians have come to understand: the moth is no threat and the pesticide kills wildlife and will kill people. That’s the down home truth that Kawamura would like us to close our eyes to so that his planes can start buzzing our houses this summer. Lieber wisely points out the recent press that has been given to the rotten corruption at the heart of the EPA. Senator Barbara Boxer just convened a hearing regarding the EPA fiasco, and Californians realize we are dealing with the same mechanism here of unfounded ’scientific’ declarations, political scandal, dirty money and zero regard for human or environmental health. Take a look at the comments on these 3 CPR articles. No one is being fooled.

Mayor Robert Lieber has become one of Vegan Reader’s favorite people in this war between the State and the People of California, and his article is a must-read for everyone. We sincerely hope that Kawamura will finally get the message that we think he’s such a liar, we’d be glad to send the fire department to put out his flaming pants. A.G. Kawamura needs to lose his job, yesterday, but we hope Lieber will remain the Mayor of Albany for as long as the city can keep him.

—-
Heads Up: Be sure not to miss Joanie Greggains’ KGO show this Saturday, May 24th at 8 AM. Both Mayor Lieber and Frank Egger will be guests. Joanie continues to provide one of the most vital services in this public health crisis - caring, investigative major media. She’s a hero!

View Larger Map

The above map depicts the SF Bay area water bodies that will be illegally exposed to the toxic pesticide, Checkmate, in defiance of the product label warning which forbids introducing into water. Starting in August, the California Department of Food and Agriculture will begin flying their pesticide planes over human habitations and wildlife habitat. The spray will poison the SF Bay Area’s watershed. This is illegal and must be halted.

Doesn’t Audubon Care?

With the exception of Sequoia Audubon, not one Audubon chapter has come out against the spraying, and this fact was remarked upon by KGO Radio Host, Joanie Greggains, this morning.

A week has now gone by since I sent 43 emails to 43 California Audubon Society Chapters carefully explaining the deaths of hundreds of birds that occurred following the 2007 spraying of Monterey Bay. I am shocked and disturbed that in reply to these 43 emails, I received a single, one-line response from the Mendocino chapter of Audubon which asked why I hadn’t told them about the dead birds last fall. I wrote back to the chapter and explained that I don’t live in Monterey and had only learned about the deaths of wild and endangered birds a couple of months ago. I urged each of the chapters to write back to me, to get involved, to start acting now to stop the spray. Not one group has dignified my letter with a reply. I am so disappointed.

I am a native Bay Area resident and a published wild bird illustrator. I wasn’t sending them junk mail to be deleted or ignored, but sincerely trying to alert the Audubon Society that if they don’t take this seriously, there aren’t going to be any birds left to enjoy. I have spent countless hours of my life exploring wild bird habitat all over the Bay Area. Birders like me are expecting thousands and thousands of deaths amongst our already-vanishing wild bird populations if CDFA/USDA are not halted and reprimanded for violating their spray’s own safety warnings as well as federal acts which protect clean water, clean air and endangered species.

I don’t know how this crisis could be so lacking in interest for Audubon chapters from one end of California to the other that they could not even be bothered to respond to my email.

Monterey peninsula people woke up after the spray to a world devoid of bird song, and looked out to sea to see rafts of hundreds of dead and dying sea birds washing ashore. I believe we are looking at our government’s newest version of DDT and I am dismayed that not a single Audubon chapter chairman I contacted feels this is worth taking note of. Has someone gotten to them? Told them to be silent?

If you financially support or are a member of your local Audubon chapter, please, take this warning seriously. For birders, winter is a time of rejoicing as the migratory shore birds flock in droves to the entire rim of the SF Bay, all the wonderful lagoons and marshes. Imagine these habitats littered with the corpses of endangered Brown Pelicans, with Godwits and Murres, with Avocets and Scaups! Then you will know what the beaches looked like in Monterey and Santa Cruz.

Keeping that picture of horror and biochemical genocide in your mind, how can anyone involved in the Audubon society not be dropping any other plans they had for 2008 to fight the illegal and deadly activities of our State and Federal Government? Audubon has NO reason to exist without the birds.

And, if that isn’t scary enough, remember that the bodies of water are our life source, too. They will be scummed over with yellow foam and swimming in plastic and pesticides. The canaries in the coal mine have already shown us what the LBAM spray, Checkmate, does to life forms. It kills birds. Doctors have stepped forward to explain that it will kill people, too. How can this be lacking in interest?

Please, look at the map and imagine it choked with dying birds. Imagine California without bird song.

Thinking of taking the kids to Monterey Bay Aquarium this year for a family vacation? If you’re considering doing this because you love sea life and want to share the wonders of it with your children, don’t give your money or support to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

In the fall of 2007, the Monterey Bay Aquarium made no objections to allowing Monterey Bay, including the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary, to be aerially sprayed with a pesticide compound that is toxic to aquatic life and illegal to introduce into water.

Rather than taking the very strongest stand to protect the sea otters and other aquatic creatures, the Monterey Bay Aquarium maintained an eerie silence regarding the California Department of Agriculture’s illegal ‘emergency’ spraying of Monterey. The Monterey Bay Aquarium refused to let concerned local residents come to make presentations regarding the dangers of the spray to their board members. They turned a blind eye and a deaf ear, and as a result the following damage was done to marine life and wildlife on the Central Coast of California:

At least 650 sea birds washed up dead on the beaches
Song birds and hummingbirds died and disappeared
Cats, dogs and rabbits were sickened and died
Fish died
Bees died

It is impossible to know how many sea otters may have died in the Monterey Bay as a result of the spraying. What we do know is how many sea otters are hanging onto existence by the merest thread in the Monterey Bay.

The Last of California’s Sea Otters
Once, sea otter populations flourished in the hundreds of thousands of members, stretching in an arc from Asia to Baja. However, the bloody fur trade of the 1700s-1800s resulted in what was believed to be the total extinction of California’s sea otters. Then, in the 1920’s, a tiny population of them was rediscovered and they were eventually protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.

Yet pesticides like DDT and the toxins in city runoff infiltrating the Monterey Bay have kept populations at dangerous lows.

Today, only 2800 sea otters remain in California. According to marine biologists, a single event, such as an oil spill, could wipe them out entirely. The precious sea otters would be gone forever.

Like beavers on the land, sea otters create and maintain ecosystems in the sea. They are a keystone species for the health of kelp forests.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium trades on the idea that they care about the otters and other marine life of Monterey, but they did nothing to protect wildlife from the CDFA’s chemical assault despite the fact that it is precisely the kind of cataclysmic disaster capable of pushing the tiny population of sea otters over the brink into permanent extinction.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Is Untruthful
The slogan of the aquarium, and its professed mission statement is:

“The mission of the non-profit Monterey Bay Aquarium is to inspire conservation of the oceans.”

Allowing, without protest, the dumping of toxic pesticides that have runoff and drifted into the sea is the polar opposite of conserving the ocean.

Following the 2007 aerial spraying, a sickly yellow-green sludge poured from the streets, through runoff tunnels, right into the bay, covering the Central Coast for miles with yellow foam, laden with the plastic microcapsules in which the pesticide was distributed and causing the deaths of marine birds and wildlife. Among the sea birds killed was the federally-protected Endangered Brown Pelican. The federally-protected Sea Otters inhaled, swam in and ate the pesticide in Monterey Bay and no one knows how many may have been sickened and killed.

Monterey Bay Aquarium certainly isn’t telling us.

Many of the animal exhibits in the aquarium take in their water directly from the bay. Did Monterey Bay Aquarium employees come into work the mornings following the spray to discover dead fish and marine mammals floating in the tanks? Were they given orders to dispose of the dead creatures before the public was let in?

Monterey Bay Aquarium isn’t telling us.

There’s so much money riding on it for them.

Behind the Scenes at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
In 2006, the Monterey Bay Aquarium profited from the nearly 1.9 million visitors who paid admission to the business at the price of $24.95 for adults and $15.95 for children. Their website received over 8 million visitors. This is huge business, all trading on the image the Monterey Bay Aquarium has successfully created in the public mind of caring for the health of marine life and habitat.

The time to prove themselves came in 2007 when it was announced that Monterey would be subjected to blanket pesticide application. Monterey Bay Aquarium failed in their self-proclaimed mission of conserving the ocean and hundreds, likely thousands and thousands, of wild creatures died.

The aquarium’s Executive Director, Julie Packard, writes interesting articles about her commitment to protecting the ocean from toxins, fighting global warming, conserving wildlife. What was she doing when the entire Central Coast was mobilized into an uproar over forcible aerial spraying of untested chemical compounds over people, animals, water and land? Why was Julie Packard silent when she should have been shouting loudest against the poisoning of Monterey Bay and its wildlife? What better fight could Julie Packard have spearheaded in 2007? Why did she fail? Why refuse to let local people come present to her staff about the harm of the spraying?

What happened at Monterey Bay Aquarium? Did A.G. Kawamura, a USDA bigwig, a government official show up in Julie Packard’s office last year, shut the door and blackmail her into creating a policy of silence regarding the exposure of sea otters, vital marine mammals, fish and sea birds to deadly, untested pesticides? Did they scare her so badly that she went along with them? Could money have changed hands? I have no idea. I’m only asking, asking, asking - what is going on?

Because the Monterey Bay Aquarium isn’t telling us.

Rather, they are continuing to take tickets and invite thousands of schoolchildren to visit the toxic Monterey Bay Aquarium which must be loaded to the ceiling with pesticide residues and deadly PM10 pollution as is the rest of the Central Coast now. They are continuing to trade on the unsupported claim that they are committed to protecting wildlife while allowing the government to spray Monterey, unhindered by a single protest. It could have been incredibly powerful for Julie Packard and her staff to invoke the Endangered Species Act in order to protect species like the sea otters and Brown Pelicans.

Any person who knowingly violates any provision of the Endangered Species Act may be liable for a civil penalty of not more than $25,000 for each offense, and a criminal penalty of not more than $50,000 and/or imprisonment for a period not to exceed 1 year.

CDFA ought to be facing this penalty right now, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium ought to be congratulating themselves for forcing the State and Feds to uphold their own laws! But, they have chosen silence.

What Can A Boycott of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Do?
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a business that relies upon millions of dollars in annual ticket sales to remain in operation. If people stop buying the tickets, the aquarium will go out of business.

A boycott acts as a way to put pressure on businesses that have lost their conscience. It reminds them that receiving our money is contingent on winning our approval of their company. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has lost public approval by failing to protest the aerial spraying of Monterey.

Numerous citizen testimonies emerged following the spraying of residents who live in the same neighborhood as the aquarium. Citizens and their pets fell grievously ill and went outside to witness the rafts of dead and dying seabirds wash up on their beaches. It would be indefensible for the Monterey Bay Aquarium to claim that bay wildlife and the animals in their care were not affected by the aerial dumping of toxic pesticides.

As we see it, they now have a choice. If the Monterey Bay Aquarium was blackmailed, threatened with punishments, they need to become transparent about that. I am completely confident that their millions and millions of patrons would rush to their aid if they knew that the government had interfered with the stated conservationist mission of the aquarium. The time to come clean about this is now.

Just this month, the Monterey County Court ruled that CDFA broke the law and violated the California Environmental Quality Act by declaring a false emergency and spraying Monterey. CDFA is now being viewed by the public as lawbreakers.

A boycott sends the message to the aquarium that they should not lump themselves in with these lawbreakers.

The Court ordered that an Environmental Impact Report be conducted prior to the any further aerial spraying in Monterey.

If the Monterey Bay Aquarium staff came into work to discover dead fish and mammals floating in their display tanks, the time to come forward with that vital information is now. A boycott tells Julie Packard and every single employee at the aquarium that the truth about the injuries and death of wildlife is more important to the public than entertainment or money. The deaths of marine life and fouling of the bay and watershed need to form part of the basis of the EIR. Again, it is illegal to spray Checkmate (the pesticide CDFA used) in such a way that it gets in water. It got into the water. This is illegal and Monterey Bay Aquarium doubtless knows how much of it ended up in their tanks. They need to uphold their self-appointed mission and come clean about what happened after the spraying.

In a capitalist society, your dollar speaks loudest. A boycott tells Monterey Bay Aquarium that they need to uphold real protection of marine life if they want to stay in business.

It’s Not Enough To Abstain
For a boycott to have impact, you need to tell the offending business why you will not be giving them your money. If, in the past, you have sent donations to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, contact them to tell them you are withdrawing your financial support unless they come clean about the LBAM spraying of Monterey and its damage to wildlife. If you intended to buy tickets this year to take your family to visit the aquarium in Monterey,
phone the ticket office at (800) 756-3737 and tell them you have changed your mind about the trip because Julie Packard and her staff failed to protest the spraying of pesticides on endangered marine life.

It is unfortunate that private citizens so frequently have to act as the conscience for public businesses. Yet, this is a power that we hold and that power is in our refusing to support businesses that double-talk. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has the choice to live up to their mission of protecting marine life or to lose public trust and go out of business. Talk to them. Tell them that this is their choice. They cannot afford to remain silent.

A hearing was convened last week in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on the scientific integrity of the decisions of the Environmental Protection Agency. Senator Boxer delivers a keynote testimony regarding the way in which the EPA is guilty of putting special interests ahead of scientific data in order to serve its contributors from Big Ag, Big Pharma and other top threats to human and environmental health.

Watch the hearing

What Senator Boxer is doing is what this country so desperately needs - taking first step to launch a thorough investigation of the very industries that were created to protect us and our lands and which are now operating as the lap dogs of America’s top polluters.

The corruption that is at the rotten core of agencies like the EPA, OEHHA, USDA, etc. needs to be exposed and scrubbed clean out of these groups, or these entities need to be shut down. They are doing far more harm to us than good, and the spraying of California is a perfect example of the utterly criminal activity of these bureaucracies.

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Also, don’t forget to tune into KGO tomorrow to hear Roy Upton on Joanie Greggains’ show at 8 AM. Archives will be available, too.

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Update:

I was so heartened by Sen. Boxer’s comments at the above hearing, I have written her a letter tonight. I’ll copy it here:
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Dear Senator Boxer,
I have spent 3 hours this evening watching the hearing in which you participated on the subject of the corruption of the EPA. I was so impressed by your remarks and your insistence that financial concerns and special interest goals form no part of a discussion of human and environmental health. I am so grateful to you for letting these words ring out at this hearing.

As you know, California is currently in the grip of just such a corrupt situation. The USDA and CDFA are violating our constitutional guarantee of safety by subjecting us to forcible inhalation and ingestion of an aerially sprayed pesticide. Hundreds of families have already fallen ill because of this aggression against them. How do I know this is true?

I am authoring the Internet’s most active blog on the subject of the LBAM pesticide assault, and many of my readers are those who were sickened by the 2007 spraying. In my capacity as a blogger, I have spoken personally with scientists, doctors and major media, all of whom agree that our health and our lives are in jeopardy because of the special-interest-funded activities of our governor and the unconstitutional actions of the UDSA/CDFA.

We don’t need any new laws. It is illegal to discharge onto private property without consent. It is illegal to subject Californians to human experimentation without consent. We need no other laws to protect us from this illegal activity, but where we have discovered ourselves to be next to helpless is in getting our public servants and agencies to uphold these laws.

Like EPA, Gov. Schwarzenegger is guilty of receiving thousands of dollars in contributions from the pesticide manufacturer and from CDFA Secretary Kawamura. He appointed both Kawamura, who is conducting the spray, and Joan Denton to OEHHA, the agency responsible for throwing out all of the hundreds of reports of pesticide poisoning that were made following the spray.

Between them, they have their deal all sewn up and, unlike the patriotic citizens of California, have no compunction about breaking the law. Clearly, they think they will not be held accountable for causing the diseases and death that our independent doctors and scientists say will ensue as a result of the aerial spray.

My daily involvement in this life-threatening issue is has led me to conclude, like you, that our agencies are corrupt and are responsible for killing people out of negligence and greed. I feel I am living in a time of insanity that any agency declares itself authorized to drop poison on millions of human beings. How can this be?

Having just watched your evident commitment to blowing the whistle on the EPA, I am writing to implore you to come to our aid in California. It isn’t enough, when the lives of so many innocent men, women and children are at stake, to write letters, to speak firm words.

We desperately need at least one of our senators to call these actions what they are - an air attack on the people of California that will not be tolerated. We desperately need your outrage, Senator Boxer, and we need your help to protect our children, our parents, our immune-compromised spouses, our water, our air, our lives.

An inalienable right is something that can neither be given nor taken away. It is not granted by the government nor any other agency. Rather, it is an innate quality pertaining to the human person that all civilized peoples recognize. In what other time or place would a group of murderers be dignified with the title ‘agency’? How can our country have gone this way?

I believe in you, Senator Boxer, and that is the first time I have ever said such a thing to a member of government. When I hear you speak, I know you see the madness that is surrounding us, threatening to blot out humane thought and reason.

I do not believe you could engage yourself in a more crucial issue in 2008 than defending the innocent people of California and demanding that our basic constitutional rights be upheld.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter.

Sincerely,
& etc.

Read the text of the letter

Press Release from Pesticide Watch:

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Asks for Freeze of Apple Moth Aerial Spray

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) has sent a strongly worded letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) calling for a halt to aerial spraying for the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM ) in California until comprehensive health and environmental evaluations are done.

In the letter, which was released to the public on May 15, Congresswoman Lee asks “that USDA strongly encourage CDFA to freeze plans for the aerial spraying in California pending the completion of an environmental impact report, a rigorous scientific study of alternative solutions for addressing the LBAM population, and comprehensive toxicity tests that account for both the short and long-term impacts of the entire pheromone-pesticide compound. It is imperative that the people of California are not subjected to unknown risks of aerial pheromone treatments without proper scientific review and consideration of public participation and comment.”

Rep. Lee’s call for comprehensive and independent toxicity tests of the short and long-term effects of the spraying highlights the shortcomings of the current testing, recently announced by the Governor, of the pesticide formulas proposed for use this summer. Those tests address only short-term exposure and do not study the long-term, continuing exposure risks Bay Area residents will face from the monthly spraying program that is planned to continue for several years.

Rep. Lee’s letter also points to the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s concerns about the risk to the water supply from aerial spraying, and highlights the contradiction inherent in starting spraying this summer before an Environmental Impact Report is complete. The letter notes that the recent report released by the state regarding the health complaints filed after last fall’s spraying in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties contains disclaimers that it “should not be considered a thorough epidemiological exploration” and that “numerous data and study design limitations” leave it unable to determine whether or not the health complaints were linked to the spraying. In light of the report’s limitations, Rep. Lee calls for a “comprehensive plan for measuring the ongoing public health impacts that will yield accurate quantifiable results which are necessary to make serious decisions regarding the future aerial application of pheromones in California.”

In response to Congresswoman Lee’s letter, Robert Lieber, RN, Mayor of Albany, said “We are very pleased that Congresswoman Lee has stated her deep concern about the human and environmental health risks of the USDA/CDFA apple moth eradication plan. Her letter points to the lack of solid scientific basis for the eradication program and clearly lays out the reasons this program should be halted.”

Opposition groups are asking that the USDA downgrade LBAM’s status so that it is no longer a quarantinable pest targeted for eradication, both to stop the unnecessary eradication program and to relieve farmers who suffer from current LBAM quarantines. Nan Wishner, Chair of the City of Albany Integrated Pest Management Task Force explains, “There is no evidence or scientific basis for considering this relatively benign moth a dangerous pest. Entomologists tell us it has been present in California for decades and is likely already being controlled by natural predators. CDFA itself states that the LBAM has caused no crop damage. This eradication program is about trade politics, not science or risks to crops. Congresswoman Lee has taken an important step toward stopping the program by addressing her concerns to the USDA, which should alter LBAM’s categorization based on up-to-date science.”

Congresswoman Lee is the third Bay Area representative to publicly question the LBAM eradication plan. Last week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) wrote to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger requesting he answer concerns about the safety and efficacy of the program, and in late April Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer expressing similar concerns. Meanwhile more than 26,000 citizens have signed an on-line petition opposing the spray. In addition, 25 city and county governments in California have officially opposed the plan along with more than 70 organizations, including, most recently, the California Nurses Association, the Oakland Zoo, the East Bay Municipal Utilities District Board, and the East Bay Regional Park District Board.

In fall 2007, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), with funding from USDA, aerially sprayed pheromone-based pesticides over populated areas in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. More than 600 people reported adverse health reactions. CDFA plans to expand spraying this August to include the San Francisco Bay Area. Seven counties, with a total population of 4.8 million people, are within the spray zone.