Kauai Mayor: County Doesn’t Have Money for Pesticide Oversight
Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho wants to put the brakes on a controversial bill that would increase county oversight of biotech companies and heavy agricultural users of pesticides.
Carvalho and his staff testified Tuesday during the Kauai County Council鈥檚 hearing on Bill 2491, that the county is ill-equipped to implement the measure, lacking qualified staff and sufficient funds.
The mayor asked the council to hold off on the bill for a couple of months while he seeks help from the state in regulating pesticide use.
“I want to make sure if this happens, that we have the right people, the resources, the understanding, the follow-up, everything,” Carvalho told the council. “Because it’s not as simple as people may think.”
The state has come under fire from council members for lax oversight of pesticides. But Carvalho said he was convinced that the state would address the county’s concerns after recently meeting with key staff from Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s office and Russell Kokubun, director of Hawaii’s Department of Agriculture.
The council agreed to put off action on the bill and is expected to take it up again next Tuesday.
The mayor鈥檚 testimony was quickly panned by staunch supporters of the bill who hoped that the council would pass it on Tuesday and send it on to the mayor for approval. Backers say there appears to be enough support on the council for passage and to fend off a veto.
Nomi Carmona, president of Babes Against Biotech, which has played a visible role in Hawaii鈥檚 anti-GMO movement, told Civil Beat that the group would actively campaign against the mayor or any other lawmaker who doesn鈥檛 support the bill or wants it deferred 鈥 regardless of whether they have a vote.
鈥淲e will consider it a willful endorsement of the continued poisoning of Kauai,鈥 she said. 鈥淎nd we will work against their election.鈥
Carmona noted that Carvalho, who recently announced that he will seek reelection, has accepted $4,000 in donations from the biotech companies since 2009. Dupont-Pioneer donated $2,000 to the mayor this past May, according to state campaign finance records. In 2009, Syngenta and Dupont-Pioneer both contributed a total of $2,000.
Syngenta, DuPont-Pioneer, Dow and BASF, the four companies doing business on Kauai, are most affected by the bill.
The mayor, who has also been toting a “GMO Free” sign at a recent protest, has not taken a position on Bill 2491, said Beth Tokioka, his spokeswoman.
She said that the mayor’s biggest concern is making sure that measures called for under the bill can be realistically enforced. The county will have to pass a separate bill to fund the measure.
The mayor鈥檚 office estimates that the county would need to come up with more than $1.3 million by July 1, 2014 鈥 $125,000 of it by the end of the year.
The county will need to hire new staff to enforce the bill, go through what could be a lengthy and contentious rule-making process and be prepared to conduct complex criminal or civil investigations, the mayor’s staff testified.
Bill 2491 requires that the state鈥檚 largest users of restricted-use pesticides disclose specifics about their pesticide use, including what chemicals they are spraying, where and in what quantities. It also requires setbacks between fields being sprayed with pesticides and public areas, including parks, schools, roads and waterways. And it requires the county to conduct environmental and health studies on pesticides.
The mayor hopes that the state Department of Agriculture will step in and help enforce the buffer zone requirement in the bill, said Tokioka.
Debate on the bill has stoked emotions about the safety of genetically altered organisms and pesticides. Farm workers worry that the opposition to GMOs is threatening their jobs.
Dozens of supporters and opponents of the bill camped out overnight on the lawn fronting the Kauai County Building in order to get seats Tuesday morning in the small, 70-seat hearing room.
