To the editor:
Glyphosate (sold commercially as RoundUp, an organophosphate pesticide) is part of a chemical cocktail a private forest owner is planning to aerial spray over 473 acres of Beaver Creek forested wetland north of Waldport in the near future.
The landowner and the Oregon Department of Forestry, who issues the permit to spray, might consider the following: Beaver Creek supplies 100 percent of the water to 5,500 people in Seal Rock and South Beach; aerially sprayed herbicides have been proven to drift as far as 10 miles; Bayer/Monsanto has offered $10.9 billion to settle about 100,000 existing RoundUp claims; and besides non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, exposure to glyphosate can cause a large variety of o other lymphoma cancers.
This herbicide compound may be legal but it’s definitely not safe.
Why does a profit-driven, out-of-state corporation have a right to poison the land, air and inhabitants of Beaver Creek? Why don’t the people who live in Beaver Creek, who are on the receiving end of this spraying, have a right to say no? Ask your county commissioners and state representatives – and their refrain will be “Our hands are tied by Oregon state pre-emption.”
Pre-emption is a legal doctrine that enables the federal government to overrule the state and the state to overrule local governments.
It’s a doctrine used by corporate timber and corporate chemical companies to stop any local people from blocking corporate harms — aerial herbicide spraying, sludge dumping, factory farms, etc.
But sometimes, just sometimes, the people find a chink in the corporate armor and pass a citizens’ initiative. That’s what we did in 2017 when the people of Lincoln County passed Measure 21-177. It banned aerial spraying for 29 months until the doctrine of pre-emption reared its ugly head.
We did it once, we can do it again. And make it stick this time.
— Barbara Davis/Waldport, chief petitioner Measure 21-177
Yes. We can and we must do it again, Barbara. This is so critical to our health. Aerial spraying, may be economical for the forester-but at what cost? The cost of our drinking water, the cost of poisoning wildlife, the cost of polluting our air with poison. There are different ways for the forester to clear the land without aerial spraying. Let’s do this. No more spray.