HILO — Urged on by new mothers, beekeepers, organic farmers and a soccer coach, the Hawaii Island County Council on Wednesday passed a bill banning the county’s use of herbicides on public property, making Hawaii County the first local government in the state to do so.
Bill 101, sponsored by Kona Councilwoman Rebecca Villegas, will, throughout a four-year period, ban the use of Roundup and 29 other herbicides in parks and alongside roads, bikeways, sidewalks, trails, drainageways and waterways owned or maintained by the county.
“The county is taking responsibility, recognizing it as our kuleana to the people of our county and what they want to be exposed to,” Villegas said. “We are in a time of radical need for kuleana, radical need for aloha aina and radical need for kapu aloha.”
Villegas said she got support from Mayor Harry Kim’s administration before introducing the bill. But Kim said after the vote he’d have to analyze it carefully and run it past staff before committing to signing it.
“There is no disagreement we want to do this,” Kim said. “We must know the consequences of it and be able to mitigate them; we’ve got to plan for it and be willing to pay for it.”
Dozens of testifiers supported the bill, while a fewer number, primarily farmers, nursery owners and flower growers, opposed it.
Hawi resident Maya Parish, holding 5-week-old daughter Zephyr, asked the council to pass the bill “for the sake of this little one, for the sake of all the children.”
“We are in a time of ecological genocide,” Parish said. “I am appalled at the state of the world we are leaving for future generations.”
The state last year banned the pesticide chlorpyrifos, used to kill insects and worms. The state Department of Education banned herbicides on its campuses about five years ago.
The Maui County administration and the state Department of Transportation have scaled back on herbicide use on Maui, but no legislation has been passed making it mandatory.
Several Maui residents came to testify, including former DOT Highways Superintendent Stephen Rodgers, who said switching to organic herbicides and long-armed mowers enabled his crews to eliminate glyphosate, the active ingredient in the non-selective herbicide Roundup, from the mix without increasing labor costs.
“They weren’t perfect, but they did work,” Rodgers said.
The 6-3 vote didn’t come without controversy.
Kohala Councilman Tim Richards, Hilo Councilman Aaron Chung and Hilo Councilwoman Sue Lee Loy voted against the measure.
The bill doesn’t apply to private property or citizens who maintain land adjacent to county easements or lease agricultural land from the county.
But Richards, a veterinarian, rancher and staunch proponent of agriculture, expressed concerns that the bill could be used as a “stepping stone” to a countywide ban. He noted that three of the banned chemicals target weeds in soybeans and corn, which the county doesn’t grow.
Richards called the bill “too overarching, too far-reaching.”
“The last thing we need to do is put anything in the way of agriculture to prevent it growing forward,” Richards said. “I completely support the intent, but I do not support the way this bill is written.”
Supporters cited scientific studies showing herbicides are linked to cancer, decreased cognitive function and behavioral problems in children and damage to marine environments.
“Cigarettes used to be safe. Climate change used to be fake,” said Puna Councilman Matt Kaneali‘i-Kleinfelder. “A lot of things we thought were safe, we’ve found would kill us.”
Opponents worried about the cost and increased county liability when mechanical measures such as weed trimming and mowing replace chemicals to keep weeds down.
Parks and Recreation Director Roxcie Waltjen estimated she’d need 400 additional park maintenance workers at about $39,000 in salaries for each of them. Public Works Director David Yamamoto said he’d also need more staff and equipment, but he didn’t have an estimate.
Man and Womankind have a long way to go to reverse the direction of the full cargo Golden Train on a Platinum Track filled with chemicals of every degree and potency of toxicity and pollution heading…in the wrong direction.
The discovery of oil, petroleum, from oil wells and coal mines, not only allowed for modern speed transportation as fuel, but shifted the emphasis from Ox and Cart, Horse and Buggy, Mule and Plow, to the chemical scientists’ reckless manipulation of petroleum molecules, converting them into every God Forsaken item known today from the limitless use of toxic plastics and Petrochemical Poisons that hinders Human Potential and apparently limits the very length of Life Longevity and depraves the human experience of Optimal Health…all for the senseless non-sense of modern chemicals never ever seen on earth before until the Curtain of Life began to come down on the Human Race with the discovery of manipulating petroleum molecules into the unknown future of these Petrochemicals, the very chemicals that have erased our former sane Health Care of maintaining Health by relying on the Prevention, Avoidance, and Eradication of the CAUSES of Disease, to the provoking of Disease by the use of Petrochemicals and instead waiting for their EFFECTS to Pollute everything from the Air, Water, and Land of Earth down to the very integrated and interrelated necessary microbes we depend on for life while foolishly allowing the Pollution of our own Bodies vía the overuse of these Satanic Petrochemicals in the form of Agricultural Chemical poisons saturating our waters and lands and put onto and into our Food Chain thus into our bodies, plus the unGodly chemicals added to our Food polluting our bodies further, and the despicable overuse of chemicals and petrochemicals used to falsely protect our bodies in disease where instead the use of these chemicals, every time, produce more and greater disease by the toxic side effects that all chemicals Cause, and because Petrochemicals are Carcinogenic, and thus CAUSE CANCER, their use being insane and prevents an early dead body from using all its Love, Happiness, and Contribution to Family and Humanity before it is all used up; what a terrible Waste of God’s Creatures and 2 Parents’ Love.
(Author’s Note: sometimes a single picture can spark a thousand words, and a single word can evoke a thousand pictures, while a single word flooded sentence can make a single paragraph or a chapter, and change the minds of many intending really to include every human on earth of every language.)
The waste of brilliant minds of medicine, wasted on an education that reduces them for the most part to medical care more akin to ASK SIRI, by inputting to computer the signs and symptoms of disease, gender, age, and what all, only to have Siri dictate the only thing available for the most part…of Disease Care…Siri telling the doctor which drug(s) and what dosage, or worse which surgery…etc., Ad Nauseum…! A waste of brilliance of medical minds, when highest and best use of that Medical Mind, your doctor, would be better served by the challenge to discover the Cause of each and every disease and affliction, and remove it from the patient, or prevent the Cause, or at least avoid it…and this successful challenge of discovery would spread through communication networks of the medical world and serve to expose the Causes of Disease that impact 100’s of millions of similarly diseased and sick patients, lessening the number of those ill on earth, And take our doctors away from the silly immature notion of a “pill for every ill”. A pill for every ill is the epitomy of ignorance giving a toxic chemical or Petrochemical to an already sick person is adding fuel to the fire. Chemical pills that mask the signs and symptoms of Disease while the very process of that Disease continues to plague the very body it is accumulating in, until its reversal of Disease (the Healing Process) is wasted and the Disease Processes continue to its dreaded accumulation unto death for every person who passes prematurely as in under 90 years of age if not 100.
The rigors of a medical education of an M.D. degree, internship, and residency boils up to a fatigued body, and a Mentally Modified Mind unable to think for itself any longer, but follows the Petrochemical Trap of Ask Siri…for which petrochemical pollutant Drug to prescribe.
If chemical medical care is all they have for us, then we need s new system of Health Care, relying on Cause and Effect…relying on the Cause of Health depending primarily on our own integrated Nervous System and what we put in and on our bodies…the Effect of which would be Health, an ongoing necessary Process at every second of our lives, managed by the Brain Stem of every human and every other vertebrate, and depended on the natural foods matched to us by the Creator and not corporate coke and burgers…!