Call to Action to Preserve and Save Puget Sound

This blog is a bit more about me and about things I have learned and done in working to preserve and save Puget Sound for our seventh generation.
I returned to the Northwest in 1998 just as soon as my eldest granddaughter finished requirements for high school graduation in Rawlins, WY. I’d been living near Oak Creek in Sedona when I returned to Kitsap County to help my family as my forty-one year old brother was dying of cancer. Then I shared a Rawlins apartment with Christina, my granddaughter, as her mother drove a tractor trailer back and forth across the country.
I came back to Kitsap County, Washington to help my mother with the process of my dad dying from cancer. The day after the funeral my sister and I flew to Arizona to drive back with my stored belongings, visit my family in Wyoming and pick up my poodle, Shaktipaw to come with me back to Bremerton where I’d gotten an apartment.
In Rawlins I worked as a radio host on regular programming and produced my own show. Back home in Kitsap County I produced and hosted “Kitsap Views” live on the radio. I was just in time for the November 30, 1999 World Trade Protest and volunteered at http://www.indymedia.org/ when it went live to cover the event. Tom Voorhees was a major part of creating the space, providing equipment and setting up a broadcast production space. I saw he could use some help and we got to be good friends. He introduced me to Whidbey Island and by the following summer I had moved up here. In the time I’d been gone from the Northwest Kitsap County had grown from 40,000 to 240,000, the population of the State of Wyoming. Island County had about 40,000 when I moved here.
March 26, 2001 Bill Moyers broadcast “Trade Secrets” on my Brother John’s birthday. As he had died at 41 leaving four children because he tightened the bolts on a nuclear reactor on board a USSN submarine and the paper booties provided had not protected him. Learning from Bill Moyers how a million documents proved that chemical corporations had lied and colluded threw the years on my brother’s birthday, the combination made me very angry. I spoke with Marianne Edain of Whidbey Environmental Action Network about the program the next day. She told me that they had tried in 1985 to stop Island County from applying herbicides to all County roads and were only able to get No Spray signs for those who didn’t want it near their property. Additionally the State puts a huge amount of herbicides on the highway that ran the length of the island. Living in cities for twenty years I had no idea this was happening. This was just too much. She also said that the deadline for submitting comments to Island County Public Works was in six days. I got busy.
For the next five years I spent most of my time working on this issue, first with the County and then with the State. I compiled 175 pages of peer review scientific studies documenting the endocrine disruption aspects of the multiple herbicides used to control roadside vegetation and the danger of the “inerts”. Later I learned that between the County and State 10 thousand gallons of herbicides had been applied to the Whidbey and Camano Islands in the previous decade. This doesn’t include personal & lawn care use.
I wrote a cover letter, a three page abstract and a three page bibliography of the studies assembled and submitted in the 175 pages. I included the transcript of “Trade Secrets” for proof that whatever the chemical corporations said about their products could not be trusted. I knew the Commissioners would not read what I submitted so I went weekly for the next year educating them and asking questions in my 10 minutes of comment time. Several organizations joined in the fight and a new one was created, Whidbey/Camano Island No Spray – WINS. A year later April 1, 2002 No Spray was passed and the County changed how they did roadside vegetation control.
I learned several things in this process: RoundUp® causes males of multiple species to be feminized, i.e. lower sperm counts, erect penile dysfunction, testicular atrophy and elimination of male genitals; multiple herbicides are causative in non-Hodgkin lymphoma, asthma, Lymphoma, congenital anomalies, miscarriages, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), depression and violent behavior in children. I experience additional severe reactions including bleeding out of the ends of my capillaries, i.e. petechia.
The “Trade Secrets” which often make up to 97% of the formulation are much more harmful than the “active” ingredients. These are misnamed “inerts”. Denmark banned RoundUp® from their Country because it migrated rapidly into the drinking water, i.e. the aquifer. The “inerts” are never tested for; the synergistic combinations have not been tested for, especially with other herbicides. Most often several types are used.
March 2002 I met with Doug McDonald, Secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation – WSDOT, spoke with him about the above issues, the 174 pages of science, showed him the 2,000 signed petitions to Stop Herbicide Spray and told him it would cost less in the long run to not spray. WEAN and I sent in copies of all the above in time for submission of comments to WSDOT’s yearly vegetation control plan. Thus began a long frustrating process educating WSDOT. More about that at near the end of this blog.
Governor Gregoire put forth the Puget Sound Partnership call to restore and make Puget Sound healthy by 2020. I immediately wrote to her and said that the goals could never be met to clean up Puget Sound as long as the State agencies (WSDOT, Dept. of Agriculture and Dept. of Ecology) was spending hundreds of thousands, probably more, on herbicides and pesticides up stream from Puget Sound that ran downhill into watersheds, aquifers, streams, rivers and as stormwater run off directly into Puget Sound.
The majority of the near shore waters around Whidbey Island are designated as habitat for Chinook salmon, listed as endangered species. To harm a fingerling Chinook salmon or its habitat is subject to a $15,000 to $25,000 fine per fish. This is not being enforced.
I began fishing off a dock, row boating and swimming in Puget Sound at age nine. Lakes I fished on during the 1960’s that were clear to the bottom are now cloudy. At eleven I got in a lot of trouble because a friend and I rowed to Blake Island before it was a State Park and you could see the bottom of Puget Sound a long way from shore. No more. Crabs are gone or deformed off Whidbey and Blake Islands. World wide we have fifty years of fishing left maybe less as what bait fish feed on is dying. The cycle of life is breaking down at the bottom of the food chain. Hood Canal, the Gulf of Mexico and many other places are now Dead Zones often from pesticide runoff. Corporate farms up stream of the Mississippi get government welfare to use pesticides and these pour into the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone.
As an example, the Save the Salmon Plan in Island County depends on the uninformed property owner to save the Salmon but does not provide educational material on how to do it and no way to let the property owners know of their responsibility. Unless the Puget Sound Partnership comes up with a better plan than what was tried in the Chesapeake it too will fail. We will need a lot of people getting involved, making a commitment and putting in place enforcement methods to make it happen if Puget Sound is to be saved. Knowing how industry and business works I’m not optimistic but I will continue to work for the application of ecological wisdom in policies and processes involving drinking water, i.e. wells sourcing from healthy aquifers and wetlands, chemical free streams, rivers and a healthy Puget Sound.
What you can do. Link to my web page at http://www.tmgandhi.com/ and read my comments to the Puget Sound Partnership. Check out their web page at http://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/ and the comments submitted to their plan. Kathy Fletcher of People for Puget Sound submitted comments signed on to by a number of organizations. She is a part of the Partnership advisory committee, check out their web page at http://www.pugetsound.org/. Additionally: Shared Strategy for Puget Sound is at http://www.sharedsalmonstradegy.org/; Puget Sound Action Team is at http://www.psat.wa.gov/; http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org/; Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides is at http://www.ncap.org/; Washington Toxics Coalition at http://www.watoxics.org/; and the Orca Network at http://www.orcanetwork.org/. Also check out the Broken Promises series in the Seattle P-I by Lisa Stiffler and Robert McClure at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/brokenpromises.html .
These are some of several organizations working for a healthy Puget Sound. Several key issues will come up in January’s legislative session and letters from informed folks will help. Write letters to the Editors and inform your local newspapers; ask your local Public Radio and Television to cover these topics. Share what you have learned with friends and family during the upcoming holidays. Tell the Governor and PS Partnership to implement the comments submitted by a coalition of organizations working with People for Puget Sound. Get a copy of the comments submitted by a group of scientists that have been working with the issues of stormwater management for years and know the current Plan falls far short of what it will take if it is to succeed. I found their comments via the Seattle P-I in their Broken Promises series.
Secretary Doug McDonald has already claimed that what WSDOT is doing is adequate and that they are serious about controlling stormwater run off. They are far from where they need to be on this issue. Contact Doug at macdond@wsdot.wa.gov and tell him WSDOT needs to stop using herbicides to control roadside vegetation, especially if your County is No Spray. They also need to include comments from Washington Toxics that they decided was too complete and comprehensive to be included in their illegally done and inadequate Environmental Impact Study on the use of toxic chemicals. WSDOT did not address the endocrine disruption aspects of the herbicides in the process of creating the EIS that only included studies done by Chemical Corporations. It’s on their web page as an example of how they are looking out for the health of people and aquatic life. They are not. The EIS was requested by Doug after receiving my material but it never addressed the issues raised by the scientific studies I had submitted.
If this cause is not your then find your own and make a difference in our world so our seventh generation will have a quality, healthy common future. Use the power of your purse and tell stores that sell herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and other toxic chemicals that you will take your business elsewhere until they sell only salmon friendly products. Stop using Tide, and other phosphate based detergents. Switch to earth friendly cleaning products. Stop using products with perfumes in them as they are created from hydrocarbons and are harmful to life and people with asthma. A salmon can smell one part per trillion.
If you have any questions, e-mail me at tmarie@whidbey.net.
Until next time, Theresa Marie Gandhi