The Register Guard

Spraying herbicide on timberlands has foul effects

By John Sundquist

Sunday, January 28, 2007

 

As Oregonians watch their rivers run thick and brown, they watch their futures flow away.

 

Oregon 's lush forests, like the rest of life on land, depend on healthy soils. So do the fishing, tourism and outdoor recreation industries. The primary purpose of our state's land use planning laws is to protect productive soils. So why the mud?

 

Soil erosion and river contamination result from destructive management practices that are now allowed on private timberlands. The most extreme of these is the routine aerial spraying of huge quantities of poison herbicides.

 

Repeated poisonings of people, wildlife and watersheds occur, with negligible monitoring or testing. Nearly 800,000 acres of forests were sprayed statewide in 2006. Spraying in Lane County covered almost 75,000 acres. Some herbicides are so lethal that two ounces can kill every plant on an acre of ground. Most spray applications are mixes of various herbicide formulations and "inert" ingredients. These mixtures are not tested for health or environmental safety.

 

Under this type of land management, timber production drops off dramatically after the first or second harvest, requiring ever-increasing applications of synthetic fertilizers. The fertilizers themselves are deadly to soil microbes. Rain washes the poisoned soil down from the mountains to smother publicly owned spawning gravels, riverbeds, estuaries and coastal waters.

 

Forest poisoning is legal, subsidized, free of liability, and encouraged by state and federal policies. In addition, the Oregon Department of Transportation poisons road shoulders and ditches along our rivers and coastline.

 

Oregon politics have been dominated for decades by unsustainable industries dependent on toxic chemicals. Their lobbyists are experts at stifling agendas to reduce the harm. In the early 1970s, influential members of the Oregon State University School of Forestry started promoting herbicides wholesale, starting with surplus Agent Orange. Today, some of those same professors are pushing herbicides before logging as well as after. This attitude appears to be shared by most state agencies, except for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

 

Local organizations have long battled for health and justice on numerous fronts. For nearly 30 years, the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (www.pesticide.org) has researched poisons, lobbied and litigated for public safety, and offered healthy solutions to pest problems.

 

Forestland Dwellers (www .forestlanddwellers.org) is a group that maps herbicide use, documents poison exposures and organizes spray notification grids. The Oregon Toxics Alliance (www.oregontoxics.org) is seeking spray protection zones for rural schools and health care facilities. The group is also pushing for improved notification procedures when spraying occurs. Even these modest proposals for incremental relief can expect fierce opposition.

 

Our state needs a Forest Soils Protective Act to do the following:

• Repeal the pre-emption laws that deny local governments the right to regulate poisons more vigorously than occurs under lax and unenforced state standards.
• Repeal the immunity provisions in the laws that protect landowners and applicators from liability for poisons that drift off-target or otherwise cause harm.
• Change the Oregon Forest Practices Act and ODOT policy to allow herbicides only as a last resort.
• Order the state Department of Environmental Quality to initiate poison monitoring programs.
• Ensure that the upcoming four appointees to the Oregon Board of Forestry are committed to sustainable management and public health.
• Send a resolution to Congress to outlaw the federal risk-benefit analysis that allows the sales commissions on forest herbicides to be used in calculating the economic benefit of using the herbicides.

 

Clean water is just one result of healthy forest soil. Timber yields from sustainable forestry are much greater over the long run. And the total value of secondary products exceeds that of the timber. Employment, recreation and economic development are increased, and carbon is stored rather than emitted. Sensible forest practices don't need to be invented, just implemented.

 

No society in history has survived the destruction of its soil. The choices are critical and immediate: prosperity or collapse. Demand that legislators protect our soils, our future. It's time to make history.

 

John Sundquist is a farmer on land north of Coburg . He is a member of the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, works with Forestland Dwellers, and is on the board of directors of the Oregon Toxics Alliance , but he is not writing on behalf of those organizations.