FIGHTING HERBICIDES

...The title of Newton's report, "An Economic Analysis of Herbicide Use for Intensive Forest Management," sounds dry...

...The history of Oregon's Citizens Against Toxic Sprays, a model for the national movement against the phenoxies, is typical...

...At one time, opposition to nuclear power was founded almost exclusively on fear of radiation...

...For instance, she notes that cost estimates invariably assume that a single treatment is sufficient, when in reality aerial spraying usually takes place over the same acreage numerous times...

...Herbicides didn't come from nowhere...

...Significantly, the group went on to tackle a nuclear plant...

...There is talk of a developing "biohazard coalition" or "toxic chemicals movement...

...I don't think that's really blossomed yet, but we're starting to have people sneaking information out about what goes on at work...

...Conversations with movement organizers around the country make it clear that for most, anti-herbicide or anti-pesticide efforts are more than a one-issue environmental cause...

...Alternatives to herbicides, she points out, would provide "all kinds of forestry technician jobs," from manual clearing of brush and thinning of trees to more detailed planning of operations...

...The group's current major project is a lawsuit against the Forest Service's spraying project in northern Idaho...

...I don't think we can ultimately solve the problem of toxic chemicals without linking them to an analysis of and attempt to change the political and economical structure...

...But as the movement grew in sophistication, its adherents began to include economics in their arguments...

...Even if safety problems could be solved, it is now commonly argued, nuclear plants will make power costs prohibitively expensive, centralize resources in fewer hands, and eventually devastate the nation's capital structure...

...This developing coalition also includes consumer and health groups as well as the traditional environmental organizations...

...Without exaggerating the firmness of the alliances or the permanence of the victories, it is nevertheless possible to find evidence for this developing coalition in nu^ merous, widely scattered skirmishes...

...11 In Arkansas, a remarkable citizen coalition won a major anti-herbicide court battle late in 1978, in which the Forest Service agreed through a consent decree to abandon all aerial spraying for ten years in that area...

...While opposition to nuclear power has certainly become more widespread, nuclear power opponents have yet to break out of the "environmentalist" political ghetto...

...It's hard to talk about herbicides in isolation," says Fred Miller, a co-coordinator of the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, a twenty-seven-group organization that has assumed CATS' mantle as national coordinating office for anti-herbicide work...

...Mistakes in the economic analysis supporting herbicide use range from the subtle to the ludicrous," Newton claims...

...The CNFC is working to draw in support from organized churches, farmers and agricultural workers in rice-growing areas (which are heavily sprayed with phenoxy herbicides), members of the labor force who work with these chemicals, and eventually to reach beyond forestry-related groups entirely to coalesce with other "chemical toxins" movements, such as those involving people whose homes are threatened by chemical dumps...

...Gillham hopes for coalitions built on a growing awareness of the relationships between chemical-related problems—the "milieu" Fred Miller spoke of...

...Anti-herbicide groups have also funded research indicating that in many cases herbicides simply don't have the desired effect on target species, or are sprayed in areas where the brush they are intended to suppress really isn't a problem...

...The argument now is that they don't work...

...Her restating of the evidence in the official reports tends to indicate that manual treatment may well be cost-competitive, in the near future if not immediately, while creating jobs and removing toxic dangers...

...CCOP is somewhat unique in its urban focus...

...The coalition's long-range goal is to agitate on all forestry-related issues, from clear-cutting to wildlife management...

...From its cubbyhole office in Eugene, the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides serves as a nerve center for the movement, answering a constantly jangling telephone, keeping various groups in touch with each other, helping citizens organize against local spraying operations throughout the Northwest, and collecting data on spraying incidents...

...But in many parts of the country, anti-herbicide groups have moved beyond their original constituencies of small farmers and tree planters, organic gardeners and environmentalists, to begin the essential political work of building coalitions and broadening the movement's base...

...In short, the argument is no longer merely that herbicides are dangerous...

...Its conferences have drawn heavily from farmers' and agricultural workers' groups and from labor unions—the latter including public employes, teamsters, longshoremen, and chemical workers...

...Here the parallel with the anti-nuclear movement begins to wobble...

...11 Activists whose causes have brought them into frequent contact with the U.S...

...The anti-herbicide movement began with isolated groups of rural citizens who became concerned about the health effects of the phenoxy herbicides—particularly 2,4,5-T—which are sprayed over millions of acres of forest and farmland each year by the billion-pound lot...

...But the herbicidal milieu also ensnares many potential allies for the anti-herbicide activists, since understanding the system that fosters herbicide use eventually leads to understanding how many groups within society are affected by chemicals in related ways...

...But it didn't take herbicide opponents long to realize that when the spraying of one chemical is blocked—as with the recent suspension of 2,4,5-T and related Silvex (2,4,5-TP) by the Environmental Protection Agency—the helicopters and hand applicators are simply reloaded with new substances...

...Her conclusion is anything but...

...She accuses the compilers of Government environmental impact statements and Environmental Protection Agency documents of gross technical errors in economic calculations...

...The Newton report provides a great deal of ammunition to the wing of the anti-herbicide movement which is attempting to form alliances with labor by concentrating on the jobs issue...

...In various parts of the country, the vanguard of the movement has begun to form tentative alliances with farmworkers' groups, some farm organizations and other pesticide opponents, unions concerned about workplace hazards, church congregations, consumer and health groups, and even citizens concerned about chemical dumps...

...What I see over the next ten years is an effort to build up local awareness through focus on local issues, until we can build up to state and national organizing...

...Forest Service banded together in 1979 at Fayetteville, Arkansas, to form the Citizens National Forest Coalition...

...Teachers, grocery store owners, dairy farmers, cattle farmers, you name it from Newton County, they were involved," says Tom McKinney of the local Sierra Club...

...Even while they continue the battle against 2,4-D, Picloram, Roundup, and the rest of the array of herbicides used on forests, fields, rights-of-way, and urban lawns, anti-herbicide activists have widened their focus...

...Only when the Forest Service refused to limit use of 2,4,5-T in their few isolated valleys did CATS members escalate the fight...

...When benefits are calculated, the assumption is made that the sprayed area is entirely cleared of brush, freeing the desired species for more rapid growth, but Newton demonstrates from the Forest Service's own evidence that the herbicides are ineffective against many of the target species (actually encouraging some to grow faster), that many of the acres sprayed don't really need it, and that the herbicides often damage the species they are intended to help...

...I think it's a good way to educate people about what the economic and political system is doing to them...

...NCAP published a major study which marks another milestone in the anti-herbicide movement's progress toward an attack on the entire "milieu" in which spraying takes place...

...Now that people have begun talking about it, they've seen that it's a cultural practice...

...But we're a long way from that...

...We're starting to get a lot of inquiries from people within factories, things like concern about exposure on the job," notes Paul Merrell, a CEQ activist...

...One of the plaintiffs was the Ozark Headwaters group of the Sierra Club...

...Ultimately, it will have to be tied into a political movement...

...f In Maine, PEST (Protect the Environment from Sprayed Toxins), begun in opposition to the state's budworm spraying program, is now linked not only with such environmental groups as Friends of the Earth and Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners, but also with the Maine Woodsman Association and the Sportsman's Alliance...

...Newton also scrutinizes the evidence concerning manual clearing of brush, and finds that costs have been wildly exaggerated while benefits have been suppressed...

...One hears a consistent belief expressed—with varying degrees of sophistication—that the use of chemicals is simply a by-product of the capitalist approach to resource extraction, reflecting increased corporate centralization and efforts to reduce the significance of human labor...

...The other was the Newton County Wildlife Association, an indigenous, broad-based group reflecti ng the population of this rural, northwest Arkansas county...

...Alternatives to spraying could provide 'all kinds of jobs' f In Idaho, Citizens for Environmental Quality (CEQ) scored a coup by forming an alliance with both the Idaho Weed Control Association (a heavily farm-dominated lobby) and the Idaho Beekeepers' Association to back a state bill requiring "integrated pest management," which relegates the use of chemicals to the status of last resort...

...At present, CCOP is directing a two-pronged effort—a rural health project, using community forums to spread information and providing lay training on pesticide poisoning, and an urban pesticide project...

...Teachers, grocery store owners, dairy farmers, cattle farmers, you name it—they were involved Herbicide opponents now argue that the use of chemicals costs jobs, and in the long run actually inhibits forest productivity by destroying "nurse species" that provide nitrogen to the soil...

...But the initial focus is herbicides, and the core of the membership is made up of anti-herbicide groups...

...They came from a particular milieu...

...Forest workers start realizing that dioxin was in the Love Canal...

...Once you get into these chemicals on one level or another, you start to realize that they're everywhere...

...The organization commissioned Jan Newton, a professor turned free-lance economist, to study herbicides on their own turf: cost-effectiveness...

...CATS began as a small band of farmers and back-to-the-land exurbanites in Oregon's heavily forested Coast Range who observed a wave of sickness in themselves, their children, and their animals following the annual application of herbicides in the area...

...Newton, working with no previous knowledge of the herbicide field, simply based her study on internal evidence in reports by the Forest Service and by pro-industry scientists...

...Miller's "milieu" represents a formidable lineup: the petro-chemical industry, the timber corporations, agribusiness, and the industry-oriented research establishment particularly well entrenched at the nation's land-grant colleges...

...I try to keep it in perspective," Shinoff adds...

...the anti-nuclear movement came to embrace a critique of the role played by utilities and corporations in our energy politics...

...Their lawsuit and persistent agitation eventually shut down the Forest Service's spray program in the entire Northwest, generated a continuing high level of anti-herbicide activism in the region, and made them the focus of attention in a national campaign against spraying...

...U Phillip Johnson is a free-lance writer in Eugene, Oregon...

...You start realizing that the same corporate strategies are involved...

...Mary Shinoff of the Coordinating Committee on Pesticides offers a realistic assessment of the status of anti-chemical organizing: "It is an issue that has a strong local impact," she notes...

...Oregon is still the most active center for anti-herbicide activity...

...Organizers frequently discuss the need to achieve a "mass base" so that toxic chemicals issues can be addressed more broadly than case-by-case protest allows...

...Herbicides are decreasing job stability in the Northwest," contends Maria Gillham, a biologist and forest worker who was formerly NCAP's co-coordinator...

...H The California-based Coordinating Committee on Pesticides spearheads some forty organizations, and has already achieved a far broader base than most anti-chemical groups...

...They haven't ceased to fear the immediate health effects of dioxin, the deadly contaminant of 2,4,5-T, and other chemical components of herbicides, any more than nuclear power opponents have abandoned their concerns about radiation...

...The Newton study indicates that the case for herbicides is exaggerated in terms of effectiveness while it radically understates true costs...

...But increasingly, anti-herbicide groups are moving beyond personal fears toward a general critique of the corporate systems— agribusiness and industrial forestry—which foster dependence on herbicides...