Redding Record Searchlight -- SPI criticized for herbicide use
January 10th, 2009
Critics of the state's largest private landowner say it's spraying too much herbicide on its cleared timberland.
"It's a tool like a chain saw for them and we think it should be something used as a last resort," said Joshua Buswell, Sierra campaigner for ForestEthics, a nonprofit environmental group with offices in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Canada.
The group recently released an analysis of state data that showed Anderson-based Sierra Pacific Industries sprayed more than 335,000 pounds of herbicide - chemicals that kill plants - on its land in the north state between 1995 and 2006.
But Sierra Pacific Industries, and other companies in the forestry industry, use less than 1 percent of the herbicide sprayed in the state, said Mark Pawlicki, spokesman for the Anderson-based company.
He said the agriculture industry sprayed more than 350 million pounds of herbicide during the same period in farm-heavy Fresno County.
"And, of course, in Fresno County that was put on the food we eat," Pawlicki said.
Ingredients in the herbicides used on Sierra Pacific's land include atrazine, which has been shown to cause male frogs to gain female sex organs and has been outlawed in Europe, said Tyrone Hayes, a biology professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
"I think it should be banned, personally," Hayes said.
He said he thinks the chemical puts workers applying it and people who drink from watersheds where it's sprayed at a health risk.
Sierra Pacific usually applies the herbicides to its land shortly after harvest to knock down fast-growing vegetation that can out-compete tree seedlings for sunlight, Pawlicki said. He said the company is sure to be within allowable limits for herbicides set by state and federal agencies.
And he said the company tests water that flows off its land.
"When the water leaves our property it meets drinking water standards," Pawlicki said.
But Don Erman, a retired ecology professor who taught at University of California at Davis, said he thinks there is reason to be concerned even if tests show water to have low levels of chemicals.
"We constantly keep learning that the amounts that we thought had no effect have some effect," Erman said.
In the two years since the data analyzed by ForestEthics ended, Pawlicki said Sierra Pacific has made some changes to what herbicides it uses. He said the company is using "better chemicals," with their most commonly used herbicide being Roundup.
"Most of what we use you can buy in the hardware store," Pawlicki said.
Because of the way the Department of Pesticide Regulation tracks herbicide usage, Buswell said it's unclear how many acres Sierra Pacific treated with herbicides.
Sierra Pacific is the state's largest private landowner, with more than 1.7 million acres of forests. That includes 240,000 acres in Shasta County, 93,000 in Siskiyou County, 118,000 in Tehama and 194,000 in Trinity.
Pawlicki said the land is usually sprayed only once, to give replanted trees a chance to start.
"We do it once in 80 years," he said.
But Buswell said the data shows some land has been treated as many as five to 10 times in a decade.
"They've gone in and sprayed a number of areas repeatedly," Buswell said.
