Crackdown on pesticide use

I have had experience with EPA, most specifically in Region X that covers most of the Pacific Northwest.  My experience comes from the fact that I volunteer for the Silver Valley Community Resource Center.  I know about the bureaucracy in Washington state too because for more than 30 years I have lived there.

I frequently offer this information when I present one of the Green Living programs I began teaching in the mid-late 80s.

I like to tell about Gary Locke, now at the Commerce Department in D.C., who while a state legislator proposed legislation to block fertilizer from coming into or being used in Washington if it contained heavy metals or other toxic substances. This hasn't had great outcomes.  The protected EPA and Washington state bureaucrats get away without too many proven successes too.

Then there are the fish folks around Puget Sound who were and may still be concerned about farm and garden chemicals and fluoride in the water supply, and the effect it has on marine life.

Well, as a shrink I know at Harvard used to say when an undergrad at Princeton, here we are! 

I guess I just have to say - what has taken you all so damn long to act?   And where the hell are the outcomes that should have shown up 30 years ago?

You might wonder too...

by Les Blumenthal - Jul. 25, 2010, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The nation's farmers could face severe restrictions on the use of pesticides as environmentalists want the courts to force federal regulators to protect endangered species from the ill effects of agricultural chemicals.

A ruling eight years ago by a federal judge in Seattle required the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Environmental Protection Agency to review whether 54 pesticides, herbicides and fungicides were jeopardizing troubled West Coast salmon runs.

The agencies moved recently to restrict the use of three of the chemicals, including a widely used one with the trade name Sevin, near bodies of water that flow into salmon-bearing streams, and they're considering restrictions on 12 additional chemicals. The Washington State Department of Agriculture says such restrictions would prevent pesticide use on 75 percent of the state's farmland.  Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/07/25/20100725env-pesticides0725.html#ixzz0uiQ9h92Q

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