From: EcoNet via Jym Dyer <jym@mica.berkeley.edu>
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism,talk.environment,ca.environment
Subject: INFO & ACTIVISM: Caltrans Still Wants to Poison Roadsides
Followup-To: talk.environment,ca.environment
Date: 1 Sep 1992 23:42:30 GMT
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: jym@remarque.berkeley.edu

[From EcoNet ecotopia.news Conference]

Caltrans Still Wants To Poison Roadsides 
 
by Andy Alm 
 
Caltrans has promised to release its final environmental impact
report on roadside vegetation control this month, and ECONEWS is
offering a quick preview because it obtained a copy beforehand.
 
While the document calls for reduction or elimination of
herbicide use along the state's highways, the status quo in
Caltrans' vegetation control efforts remains largely unchanged.
Each of the 12 Caltrans districts will still be able to use "all
available methods," including a list of 25 weed-killing poisons.
 
Caltrans uses "risk assessments" to justify its continued
herbicide use, even though it admits that complete health and
environmental effects data are not available for any of the
chemicals it uses. The mathematical risk assessment model does
not describe how toxins really act in the environment -- just
what limited laboratory studies say.
 
This narrow view of reality allows Caltrans to continue
to claim that its program of spraying thousands of highway
miles -- making it perhaps the largest single herbicide user
in the world -- has no significant adverse impacts that it
cannot mitigate with simple methods.
 
Decisions Delayed 
 
Caltrans also uses risk assessment to justify deferring major
policy decisions, such as standards for vegetation control,
reducing or eliminating purely cosmetic use of chemicals and
key definitions.
 
Caltrans also flatly refused to provide a thorough history of
its vegetation control efforts in the EIR, saying history is
"not germane" to its current and future program. This denial
maintains an illusion that repetitive spraying -- over past
decades and far into the future -- has nothing to do with
long-term effects on aquatic ecosystems, soil erosion, human
health and herbicide resistance in plants.
 
What is known, but not published by Caltrans, is that there has
never been a coordinated statewide vegetation control program.
Instead, the effort has always been fragmented, with decision-
making delegated to each of the 12 districts.
 
The proposed alternative would maintain this status quo by
keeping authority for site-specific decision-making in each
district, where budget constraints are the bottom line.  A
checklist compliance form will be the only environmental
review of each district.
 
Caltrans also denied pleas for consideration by people who
claim acute sensitivity to herbicides, because they were
unable to provide hard evidence linking their health
conditions with specific herbicides.
 
The state of Oregon, on the other hand, now requires all
chemical users to give advance notice to registered persons
whose doctors attest to their pesticide sensitivity.
 
For a copy of the final EIR, contact the Caltrans Division of
Highway Maintenance, 1120 N St., Room 3100, Sacramento, CA
95814; 916/445-9974.
 
For information on citizen efforts to track and respond to
Caltrans' roadside spraying, contact the California Coalition
for Alternatives to Pesticides, Caltrans Project, 1840 Woolsey
St., Berkeley, CA 94703; 510/843-8231.
 
(From ECONEWS, Newsletter of the Northcoast Environmental
Center, 879 9th St., Arcata, California 95521, U.S.A., August
1992. Non-profit reprints OK with credit to ECONEWS; we like
to see clips.)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive