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Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes. News: Toxic Torts HELICOPTER SPRAYING BEGINS THIS WEEK Private timberland owners Giustina and Transition Management Inc. are planning to begin aerial and ground herbicide spraying this week west of Creswell, weather permitting, but only a handful of residents in the area appears to know about it.
"There's no legal requirement for [residential] notification of spraying," says Lynn Bowers, a resident of rural Fox Hollow Road. "The first thing you will know about it is seeing the helicopter coming overhead." Bowers says she's been outraged about local forest practices for a long time, but her anger and tears weren't accomplishing anything so she chose "steely resolve" instead, and became a self-described forest activist. She is busy calling landowners and government agencies, writing letters and driving her battered Toyota sedan around tacking up signs on phone poles and trees. One sign reads "Dudes: Poison Spray? No Way Hose-A. Zip it up and Fagedabouwdit!" Bowers is concerned about the aerial spraying of Oust, Transline, Lv6 and other chemicals near upper Lynx Hollow Road, and the possibility the sprays could drift or otherwise migrate to local water supplies in the area, including the town of Creswell two miles away. Written plans, maps and notifications for the spraying were submitted early in March to the state Department of Forestry by Giustina Land & Timber Co. of Eugene. Western Helicopter Services of Newberg is listed as the spray operator. One document declares that Hill Creek and "domestic water systems and areas of open water greater than one-quarter acre at the time of this application will be buffered by leaving a minimum of 60 feet of unsprayed vegetation." Robin Winfree, who lives in the area, says she's concerned for organic growers, open springs used by residents and a horse-breeding ranch in the area. Winfree says Giustina is "not willing to negotiate" with local residents as Roseboro Lumber has. Giustina head forester Cary Hart did not return a phone call by press time. Bowers says local residents have worked out an agreement with Roseboro to delay spraying for at least two to three years and use herbicides only as a "last resort." Oust is a general herbicide manufactured by DuPont. It's absorbed by both the roots and foliage of plants and is used in reforestation before planting to kill broadleaf plants and grasses. Oust drift from helicopter spraying on 34,000 acres of burned-over BLM rangeland was blamed for major agriculture losses in Idaho in 2002, allegedly tainting soil and damaging crops on 100,000 acres, according to a story in High Country News (7/10/02). The Oust label says the product kills plants for one year, but Idaho farmers claim their land will be unusable for certain crops for up to six years. Bowers says she spoke with a pilot from Western Helicopter Services who told her he was very careful, and assured her, "Don't worry, ma'am, we won't drift on you." For more information contact daleo@efn.org — TJT
KUCINICH: OREGON CRUCIAL TO ELECTIONS Despite sparse media coverage, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has been picking up delegates. In recent primaries, he won 16 percent of the primary vote in Maine, 17 percent in Minnesota, about 26 percent in Alaska and 31 percent in Hawaii. John Kerry already has enough delegates to be the 2004 Democratic candidate, but Kucinich has pledged to stay in the race until the Democratic convention in July to be a progressive voice for millions of Americans who have not yet voted in primaries.
Kucinich, in Eugene over the past weekend, sees independent-spirited Oregon as a crucial state. "New Hampshire and Iowa had key roles in selecting the candidate," he says, "and now Oregon can put its stamp on the direction of the Democratic Party." Kucinich says that by voting for him in the May primary, Oregonians can show the Democratic Party that it must listen to progressive voters, include their views in its party platform, and thus give people a stronger reason to vote for Kerry and other Democrats in November. Kucinich spoke Sunday, March 28, at LCC where an enthusiastic crowd of more than 800 clapped, shouted, and stood up cheering over and over. Kucinich outlined his plan to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq quickly. This includes asking the U.N. to handle the transition to Iraqi self-governance, to deploy U.N. peacekeeping forces and manage Iraqi oil assets and reconstruction contracts in the interim. The U.S. must pay for what it blew up, pay reparations to families of killed and injured Iraqi civilians, help support the U.N. peacekeepers, and stop privatizing Iraqi industries. Other central issues for Kucinich are universal health care, the repealing of the USA PATRIOT Act, and U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA and WTO. These trade agreements were founded to provide cheap labor, according to Kucinich, and have cost three million American workers their jobs during the past three years. In an interview with EW, Kucinich said all these issues are vitally important in Oregon, where National Guard units are being sent to Iraq, where the state health plan is foundering because of funding cuts, where many communities oppose the PATRIOT Act, and where many workers have lost their jobs. He identified other important Oregon issues as better funding for education, and protection of air, water, and the natural world. Responding to a question about how he stays positive and focused on his goals, Kucinich replied, "I'm not coming from a place of anger. There are so many forces in our society simultaneously, so the question is this: Which forces will work through us? ... There are forces of destruction and creativity. I choose creativity." Visit www.kucinich.usfor campaign news and statements on issues from animal rights to organic farming and depleted uranium. To contact local groups, call 744-7608 in Eugene/Springfield, 767-0770 in Cottage Grove, 758-3118 in Corvallis, and 997-3345 in Florence. Deadline for registering to vote in the May 18 primary is April 27. Ballots arrive in the mail around April 28. — Kate Rogers Gessert
BEACH CLEANUP NETS NEAR-RECORD 40 TONS Under mixed skies last weekend, more than 4,700 volunteers turned out to participate in the Great Oregon Spring Beach Cleanup. The entire Oregon Coast, minus some inaccessible parts, was cleaned of debris that had accumulated during the stormy winter months. Volunteers removed an estimated 40.2 tons of trash from the coastline. This was the second highest tonnage collected during the 19-year history of the Spring Beach Cleanup. Forty-two tons were collected in 1999.
WEATHERMAN ACTIVISM COMPARED TO POST-9/11 Vietnam-era radical student leaders Mark Rudd, Carolyn Knox, David Powell and Robin Marks-Fife will be speaking in Eugene on "Social Movements: Then and Now" in a two-day gathering this weekend at UO. The Oscar-nominated documentary film The Weather Underground will be shown at 7 pm Friday, April 2 at 180 PLC on campus, and will be followed by a discussion with Rudd and other former members of The Weather Underground. Two workshops on Saturday will further explore issues of activism, violence and nonviolence, and protest and dissent in the post 9/11 era. The workshops run from 10 am to noon and 1:30 to 3:30 pm at 240 McKenzie Hall at UO.
The Weather Underground emerged as an offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969, and was responsible for a series of bombings and other violent acts against symbols of U.S. government and corporate power. The group was controversial both among the general public and among progressive political activists, many of whom felt that it discredited the left more than it built its cause. Organizers say the film and discussion will examine several questions, among them: "What is our responsibility as Americans for the inequalities of globalism? What would real social justice look like, not just in America but throughout the world? How do we as a society define violence and terrorism? What are the characteristics of effective movements for social change? Can violence ever be justified in the pursuit of such goals?" Knox was a graduate student at Kent State University in English literature and helped to organize SDS there in 1967. She now lives in Eugene, earned her doctorate and is on staff at the Center for Advanced Technology in Education, College of Education at UO. Marks-Fife was active in Kent, Ohio with first the Kent Committee to End the War in Viet Nam and then SDS from 1966-1969. She has since moved to Eugene and has worked in social services and continued as an activist for peace and social justice.
Toxic
Torts When he was in law school, Charles Siegel thought toxic torts looked sexy. A crusading lawyer making a big corporation pay for the damage its toxic chemicals have caused has often been a Hollywood theme.
But the reality of toxic torts is that although they can do enormous good, they're very hard cases, a panel of attorneys told a packed lecture hall at the Public Interest Environment Law Conference at the UO last month. "More and more I find myself wishing for a good old rollover or a doctor cutting off the wrong leg," Siegel, a Texas litigator, lamented. Roy Haber, a Eugene attorney, shares the frustration. For the past 14 years, Haber has been suing Hanford contractors, including DuPont and General Electric, for downwinder health problems allegedly caused by the former nuclear weapons factory. Haber says he has spent $10 million on the case and the U.S. government has spent $70 million defending it. He says his opponents are pursuing a "scorched earth policy" in the litigation, contesting even widely held scientific facts and refusing to settle to avoid bad publicity and future limits on how much radiation can be released. "You win or lose on your experts," Haber says. He's spent millions on experts to prove that the radiation from Hanford was capable of causing illnesses, reached his 1,000 clients in harmful doses and was a "substantial factor" in causing actual illnesses. "It's very difficult to do," Haber says of the complicated science. A trial judge threw out most of his expert testimony, including from two Nobel Prize winners, he said. But he won on appeal and the case continues. Siegel, the Texas attorney, is now working on a national case alleging that mercury formerly used as a preservative in vaccines caused autism in children. "Here we were injecting 49 percent mercury solution into 1-year-old brains," Siegel says. Siegel says the scientific evidence is on their side, but the case will still be tough with the pharmaceutical industry likely spending millions to defend their huge profits. Another big hurdle is that court precedents now allow judges to throw out toxic tort cases before they even reach juries, according to Siegel. In the past, juries were allowed to decide for themselves whether to believe the defense or plaintiff experts in a case. But "sometimes juries socked it to corporate clients," Siegel says, and defense attorneys successfully pushed for a new legal standard. Now, judges often decide the expert disputes even before the case goes to trial. The new process has "made it incredibly more expensive" to pursue toxic torts, Siegel says. Before, trial lawyers with serious cases could hope that a corporation might settle before expensive experts needed to be hired at trial. Now those experts need to be hired up front and many plaintiff's lawyers are deterred from risking the huge investment. "It's incredibly daunting," Siegel says. In Texas, corporations have gone to the Republican Legislature to make toxic torts even more difficult. "They're kind of trying to peck the jury system to death," Siegel says. Mike Axline went from being a UO environmental law professor and a founder of the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene to being a partner at a toxic torts law firm in Sacramento. "One of the things I'm learning is there is evil in the world," Axline says. But there are also some industry people who, at the end of their life, repent and testify against their former employers. Axline says one such person told of how Dow chemical stopped discharging PERC to sewers 60 years ago because of environmental damage but continued to tell dry cleaners that it was fine to flush the toxic chemical down the drain. Now, Axline says he's representing cities and drinking water managers suing because "wells are being shut down right and left in California" due to PERC contamination. Suing for the well managers and not the actual water drinkers has been easier because it's avoided the difficulty of needing to scientifically prove people got sick from PERC, Axline says. In another case, Axline sued oil companies for MTBE pollution to groundwater. In the 1980s, the oil companies found they could make billions of dollars by using MTBE as a cheap additive to gasoline. Axline says the corporations knew MTBE was dangerous to groundwater, but went to Congress and pushed legislation to require MTBE in gas as a way to reduce air pollution. Axline says the oil companies settled the resulting lawsuit after spending $70 million in a 10-month trial. Recently, oil industry efforts to attach a liability waiver for MTBE to a large energy bill in Congress resulted in the entire bill failing, according to Axline. Siegel marvels at the big bucks corporations have to defend themselves from toxic torts. If the pharmaceutical industry ever sued the petrochemical industry, he jokes, "it will be the perfect storm for defense attorneys."
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