permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Blueberries
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 12:33:01 -0400
From: nancy oden <cleanearth@ACADIA.NET>
Reply-To: Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group 
<SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU
References: <200305290400.h4T40SMK010990@thresher.prexar.com>

Speaking of blueberries, here's a piece submited to the Bangor (Maine) Daily
News and published (slightly shortened, they left out the websites) a couple
of weeks ago.  When next you hear of the healthyful effects and antioxidant
qualities of blueberries, please remember those of us who live near their
growing fields...
    - Nancy Oden, Jonesboro, Maine
For Bangor Daily News (5-2003)

 State Complicit in Poisoning Mainers

   By Nancy Oden, Clean Maine Coalition

We know pesticides hurt humans as well as wildlife, but we're only beginning
to learn the poisons' real effects on us.

  According to the World Health Organization
(http://www.who.int/pcs/training_material/hazardous_chemicals/section_1.htm#
1.6 ), pesticides cause at least 150,000 deaths worldwide each year (low
estimate) and millions of acute poisonings.

Surely, you say, the government wouldn't allow harmful chemicals to be sold
for use near or in our homes.  Unfortunately, chemical companies do their
own testing and the EPA uses this testing to determine how pesticides can be
used.  Also unfortunately, the EPA is rife with political appointees, many
of whom are ex-chemical company employees.

For example, the Velpar (hexazinone) label says it causes permanent eye
damage when poured into rabbits' eyes.  What happens to our eyes as we wash
with Velpar-contaminated water every day?  Is Velpar as persistent in our
bodies as it is in water?  No studies.

Machias has Velpar in its town water, as do other towns and individual
wells.  EPA and Maine's state government say this is fine, won't hurt a bit.
Well, it's not fine with us.

Recent studies by independent scientists (Prof. Emeritus F.W. Plapp, Insect
Toxicologist, Texas A&M Univ. and others, call or email us for texts)
discovered that nerve gas pesticides-Guthion, Sniper, Imidan, Malathion,
etc., originally created for chemical warfare--are damaging our immune
systems and causing disconnections between our brains and our central
nervous systems.  This is very serious.

Now, in addition to increased breast cancer, testicular and prostate
cancers, infant and childhood brain cancers, we are seeing many instances of
fibromyalgia, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MCS, asthma, hypothyroidism,
severe depression, multiple sclerosis and other auto-immune diseases in
formerly healthy individuals with healthy lifestyles from healthy families.

The Maine Department of Health does little to help, so far as we can see.
They do no water testing and they will not help individual or small group
well owners at all. They're responsible for town water supplies, yet they
allowed the Machias Water Company to exempt itself from Velpar testing for a
decade.  Researchers at UM Machias accidentally discovered Velpar in the
town water last year or we wouldn't know yet.  Nothing has been done about
it.

We are outraged by their suggestion that our health problems are our own
fault (BDN, April 26) while they permit, without our knowledge or consent,
our exposure to known poisons.   Why are we drinking dilute solutions of
pesticides instead of clean, healthy water?  We expect the State to start
fighting for our right to clean water, our right not to be poisoned.  We
want zero pesticides in our water.

Maine legislators passed laws protecting the poisoners, making penalties for
overspraying you, your home, or even your children or animals, very light.
The usual fine, if you can get a conviction, is about $1,000.  The maximum
is $7,500. (rare) and/or 30 days in jail.  No sprayer has ever gone to jail
in Maine.

Because the State is not protecting us, at least 21 Maine towns have put
restrictions on pesticide applicators.

Addison recently passed an ordinance banning aerial spraying unless an
exemption is granted by vote of the citizenry.  The ordinance is being
strengthened.  There will be a public hearing on it in Addison-date to be
announced--to which all are invited.  The Addison Town Office is also
working on a how-to-do-it paper; call them at 483-2817 for a copy.

You can get a list of these 21 town ordinances from Gary Fish, staff person
at the Pesticide Control Board, 287-7545.  Combine those that interest you
to create your own ordinance.  Then you can work to get it passed at your
next Town Meeting.

  Important:  your town can pass an ordinance and the state is not allowed
to override it.  This has been confirmed by both the Maine Supreme Court and
the U.S. Supreme Court (see recent case re Town of Pittston's ordinance
banning sludge spreading in their town, which was upheld by the courts).

Town ordinances also trump the so-called "Right to Farm" Act, despite the
Maine Agriculture Commissioner's assertions to the contrary (BDN, April 26).
Nor does the Pesticide Control Board have the power to countermand a town's
ordinances.

To look up studies on pesticides-always call when you see sprayers, ask what
they're spraying, and write it down--go to http://www.panna.org and
http://www.pesticide.org.  For more, go to http://www.google.com and search
for the specific chemical.

We ask most urgently, for all our sakes, especially future generations, that
chemical-dependent farmers and foresters change to clean husbandry as
Stewards of the Earth.  The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association
in Unity,  568-4142 or  http://www.mofga.org is always willing to help.
Organically grown crops are not only better for us, but also provide a
decent return for the farmer.

Clean farming and forestry mean more jobs.  Our state and federal
governments should subsidize clean farming rather than filthy industries.
Clean farming can create jobs by:
--hiring young people to thin plants or pull weeds (after a rain) instead of
using highly persistent herbicides, which stay in our drinking water for
years;
--hiring people to walk the fields/woods with propane backpacks to burn out
mummyberry or other fungus instead of using fungicides;
--hiring people to trap out the insects as they do in Canada (many sticky
traps), rather than apply the deadly chemical nerve gases;
--hiring people to do research on natural enemies of harmful insects;
--renting local bee colonies instead of importing those mite-infested,
Africanized ("killer bees") from the South.   Pesticides and the Southern
mites have devastated the bee-keeping industry in Maine, but it can be
brought back;
--buying hay from local farmers to burn the fields instead of spraying the
blueberry fields with burning oil, which harms the plants and pollutes the
earth and groundwater;
--turning to innovative methods of clean agriculture in use elsewhere such
as grazing sheep on power lines and in the blueberry fields in non-bearing
years, thereby naturally enriching the soil, keeping grasses, hardhack, and
other unwanted plants down, as well as raising lambs and wool, which used to
be major income producers Downeast;
--interplanting apple trees and/or other food trees in the blueberry fields
at wide intervals, growing two or more crops on the same land, providing
more job opportunities with a longer growing season.  Blueberries like light
shade and the trees would hold back erosion and slow down the searing winds.

We pay for the "experimental farms"--blueberry, apple, potato-which do the
chemical companies' field-testing at our expense.  Shouldn't we, not the
chemical companies, be deciding what they do there?

There are still research papers at the Blueberry Hill Experimental Farm in
Jonesboro from the 1940's, before DDT became popular.  The UMO professors
were working on ways to encourage blueberry maggot predators.  Time to go
back to that research.

Go to http://www.getipm.com for excellent ways to protect yourselves and
help stop the poisoning of life on Earth.

 The Clean Maine Coalition is meeting again on Saturday, May 17 at 9:00am at
the Mudd Alley Coffeehouse in Machias.  All interested in stopping our
exposure to toxic chemicals are welcome.  We have lots of ideas.  Contact us
at PO Box 1, Jonesboro, Maine 04648, phone 434-6228, email
cleanearth@acadia.net.

It's time for our survival instincts to come to the fore, time for genuine
democracy where We, the People, make the decisions that affect our lives.
Please join us.
                                 *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Nancy Oden is speaking here for the Clean Maine Coalition, representing
people from Addison, Harrington, Jonesboro, Milbridge, Sedgwick, Machias,
East Machias, Whiting, Marshfield, Columbia, Cherryfield, Jonesport,
Dennysville, Charlotte, and more.



--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech