CASS: Where Are You? Check Out The Latest Gambit By CA Dept Of Ag To Spray Everywhere

Please visit the following link to add your name and comments to the petition to the CA state govt to not allow indiscriminate spraying of some 79 different pesticides at the whim of some bureaucrat and without public review:

https://secure.earthjustice.org/site/Advocacy;jsessionid=E8DCE1FDF50E1FFAB3E46C7850ED3E6E.app338b?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1629&utm_source=crm&utm_content=SideBarLink&autologin=true#start


From an e-mail and the petition site from Earth Justice:



California regulators are proposing to give themselves a free pass to spray pesticides anywhere they want, at any time.

Unless you and I speak up now—before October 31—the proposed plan would allow the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to give blanket approval for the spraying of 79 pesticides and other chemicals, including substances linked to cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and the collapse of bee populations.


According to the plan, the state agency would have the right to approve new pesticides and other expansions of the spray program with no public review, notice, or analysis of the health and environmental impacts on the specific locations to be sprayed.

The plan would also directly threaten California's booming organic farming industry by forcing farmers to spray organic fields as part of mandatory statewide programs.

Let the Department of Food and Agriculture know that this is not okay!

Californians care about our health and protecting vulnerable groups such as infants, pregnant women, and other sensitive populations. With the proposed plan’s blank check to use pesticides, playgrounds and schools could be sprayed, and rivers, streams, and drinking water wells could be poisoned.

Earthjustice is fighting multiple battles to stop reckless pesticide use in California and across the nation. Please help us win these critical battles!

Make your voice heard now.

Your personalized message will be added along with the following letter:


Re: Comments on the Statewide Plant Pest Prevention and Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Report

Dear Ms. Laura Petro,

I am writing to object to several elements of the Department of Food and Agriculture's draft plant pest prevention and management programmatic environmental impact report, including:

-- The pest prevention and management program continues the Department's decades-old, pesticide-centered management practices. California should not continue to use a failed, toxic approach but should instead use the report as an opportunity to develop a truly modern, scientific, sustainable approach that will make California's food supply more resilient to pests and protect human, pollinator, and farmworker health as well as our water and the environment.

-- I am extremely concerned that the program relies on nearly 80 chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, miscarriages reproductive harm, deaths of bees and other pollinators, etc., with more chemicals potentially approved in the future behind closed doors.

-- The program gives the agency too much power to spray pesticides, without public input. The program allows the Department to carry out most program activities, and even approve certain changes and expansions of the pest program, without future public review or input. As a result, residents all over the state who today are unaware of how this proposed program might in the future result in pesticide or other treatments in their communities will have no recourse to affect or stop those future treatments.

-- The report's extremely broad scope is unacceptable, and the program poses potentially serious site-specific risks to health and the environment that have not been analyzed or disclosed in the vague and cursory health and environmental impact analysis in the document. For example, in the document:

* Infants are assumed never to be exposed to pesticide drift.

* Young children are assumed not to play in gardens where there is residue from spraying carried out under the program.

* The effects of the program's pesticides on pregnant women, the elderly, and those with chronic illness and multiple chemical sensitivity are not evaluated.

* Endocrine-disrupting effects of program pesticide exposure are not evaluated.

* The plan states that pesticide spraying can take place at or near schools, yet no analysis is performed of the effect of this spraying on schoolchildren.

* No location-specific analysis is presented of the impacts of program pesticides on surface, ground, or drinking water.

This inadequate analysis is in direct conflict with the intent of the state's environmental law, which is designed to analyze impacts before they happen so that they can be prevented and to inform the public of what those impacts will be.

I ask the Department to set aside this document as written and turn its attention to developing a program that focuses on pest prevention and does not rely on chemicals for pest management but instead supports a transition to farming methods that prevent pest infestations by building healthy soil and avoiding the use of pesticides that weaken plant and soil health; and that produce nutritious healthy food uncontaminated by toxic residues, thereby protecting the health of all Californians and of the environment, including bees and other sensitive species.

Finally, I also incorporate and endorse the comments submitted by Earthjustice and ATA Law Group on behalf of California Environmental Health Initiative, MOMS Advocating Sustainability, and others, and ask that you address those comments in your response to my letter as well.