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Beyond HerbicidesHERBICIDE ALERT The Ozark Mountains have thin porous soils. The underlying limestone karst is full of cracks and caves where surface water runs directly into groundwater. Many Ozark residents (and wildlife) depend on springs, seeps, and shallow wells for drinking water. Let’s keep our water clean. We all live downstream. CALL YOUR ELECTRIC COMPANY. HAVE YOUR ACCOUNT LOCATION PERMANENTLY NOTED, “NO SPRAY”. Please talk with your neighbors and encourage them to contact your electric provider and have your account location noted “no spray” so that everyone’s water is protected. Persons with organic farms, gardens, livestock, or illness, or chemical sensitivities may wish to communicate your concerns in writing. Several area utility providers are presently seeking a rule change from the USFS, to allow utilities to spray hundreds of miles of electric right of ways (ROW’s) throughout the Ozark, Ouachita, and Mark Twin National Forests. These include Carroll Electric, Arkansas Valley Electric, Ozarks Electric, and North Arkansas Electric, as well as many others. Please call or write and express your concerns. Contact Gary Knudsen at the USFS if you want to receive a copy of the Environmental Analysis (EA). Phone (479) 964-7234 or email gknudsen@fs.fed.us Please comment on the proposed rule change.
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Information on Pesticides and Herbicides
Beyond Pesticides provides the public with useful information on pesticides and alternatives to their use. With this information, people can and do protect themselves and the environment from the potential adverse public health and environmental effects associated with the use and misuse of pesticides.
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/
The PAN Pesticides Database is your one-stop location for current toxicity and regulatory information for pesticides. To find out more about insecticides, herbicides and other pesticides select one of the choices below. To learn more about our comprehensive collection of data sources see About the Data. This resource is a project of Pesticide Action Network North America
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/
PANNA (Pesticide Action Network North America) works to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five autonomous PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens' action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to ensure the transition to a just and viable society.
http://www.panna.org/
Pesticides in karst
Thanks Vern, for all the useful and timely information regarding pesticides. What is seldom, if ever, explored by business or government is the fragility of karst systems such as the Ozarks that provide little, if no, filtration or time delay from when the pesticide is applied and when it may find its way into the groundwater. These chemicals all have varying times in which they begin to break down into less harmful by-products or are rendered less harmful by UV light or oxidation.
What is applied to NE Arkansas or "delta" soils or Northern Missouri soils behaves totally different from what happens in the Ozarks. That is a given which somehow government and business must eventually acknowledge.
EPA regulations for storage and handling are one thing. The EPA under bush has become ultra politicized and cannot any longer be trusted to have the public good as its primary function. This is, after all, the agency which tried to have lead standards removed since "lead poisoning has decreased over the last 30 years."
As citizens of the Ozark plateaus and mountains, we need to reassert our sovereignty over our air, soil and water. We need to be willing to work with government agencies and businesses to find viable alternatives to spraying petro-chemicals on ourselves and in our backyards. We must stand firm, though, on the blanket use of these compounds as if they are "safe". We must fall back on the "Precautionary Principle" which assumes the burden of proof needs to be on the promulgators of these chemicals and NOT on the ordinary citizens. Company studies or studies filtered through universities by companies all need to remain suspect. In too many cases the effects of these chemicals don't begin to show up until 20-30 years have lapsed, making any "precautionary" steps moot.
-Tom Kruzen
Pesticides, herbicides, Ar Plant Board info
Pesticides and herbicides are supposedly considered equally by the Arkansas State Plant Board.
Below is the excerpt. I've included links to some pages of the Plant
Board. There seems to be a gap between what they could do, and what they
actually carry out. Big surprise. All this can be accessed via the Plant
Board site map:
www.plantboard.org/sitemap.html
Below are some quotes from the Arkansas Pesticide Control Act.. worth a
read
www.plantboard.org/pesticide_pdfs/PesticideControlAct(Rev.10-07).pdf
CHAPTER 16
PLANT DISEASE AND PEST CONTROL
SUBCHAPTER 4
PESTICIDE CONTROL
2-16-401. Title.
This subchapter shall be known as the "Arkansas Pesticide Control Act".
2-16-402. Purpose.
(a) The purpose of this subchapter is to regulate in the public interest
the labeling, distribution, storage, transportation,
and disposal of pesticides as defined in this subchapter.
(b) Pesticides are valuable to our state's agricultural production and
to the protection of man and the environment from
insects, rodents, weeds, and other forms of life which may be pests; but
it is essential to the public health and welfare
that they be regulated to prevent adverse effects on human life and the
environment.
(c) New pesticides are continually being discovered, synthesized, or
developed which are valuable for the control of
pests and for use as defoliants, desiccants, plant regulators, spray
adjuvants, and related purposes. However, such
pesticides may be ineffective, may cause injury to man, or may cause
unreasonable adverse effects on the
environment.
(d) Therefore, it is deemed necessary to provide for regulation of
pesticides.
Then, reading Item 23, i finally find "the Law"..
(23) "Pesticide" means:
(A) Any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing,
destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pests;
(B) Any substance or mixture of substances intended for use as a plant
regulator, defoliant, or desiccant; and
(C) Any substance or mixture of substances intended to be used as spray
adjuvant;
also further on..
2-16-406. Powers of State Plant Board.
(a) The State Plant Board is authorized, after due notice and an
opportunity for a hearing, to:
(1) Declare as a pest any form of plant or animal life, other than man
and other than bacteria, viruses, and other
microorganisms on or in living man or other living animals, which is
injurious to health or the environment;
(2) Determine whether pesticides registered under the authority of
Section 24(c) of the Federal Insecticide,
Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act are highly toxic to man. The definition
of "highly toxic" in 40, C.F.R. § 162.8, as
issued or hereafter amended, shall govern the board's determination;
(3) Determine pesticides, and quantities of substances contained in
pesticides, which are injurious to the
environment. The board shall be guided by the United States
Environmental Protection Agency regulations in
this determination;
and this:
(c) No person shall transport, store, or dispose of any pesticide or
pesticide containers in such a manner as to cause
injury to humans, vegetation, crops, livestock, wildlife, or beneficial
insects or to pollute any waterway in a way
harmful to any wildlife therein. The board may promulgate rules and
regulations governing the storing and disposal
of pesticides or pesticide containers. In determining these standards,
the board shall take into consideration any
regulations issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
The plant board also has interesting links regarding the laws and
regulations they are charged to enforce:
www.plantboard.org/pesticides_groundw.html
and regarding endangered species:
www.plantboard.org/pesticides_end.html
Link to a trove of EPA data:
www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/index.html
Happy reading!