The Border's 'Agent Orange' Controversy

Nuevo Laredo News

The Border’s “Agent Orange” Controversy

In the Vietnam War, the United States sprayed vast tracts of land with the
chemical defoliant Agent Orange as part of a counter-insurgency strategy
aimed at removing forest cover for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces.
Although the toxic dioxin released by Agent Orange was later blamed by US
veterans’ groups and Vietnamese officials for illnesses and diseases that
struck thousands of former US soldiers and upwards of four million
Vietnamese citizens, the US Supreme Court recently refused to consider a
case by pursued by Vietnamese plaintiffs against the manufacturers of
Agent Orange.

Four decades later, on the US-Mexico border, the US Border Patrol intends
to employ a chemical herbicide in order to eradicate stands of the Carrizo
cane, an invasive plant that grows as tall as 30 feet and provides
convenient cover for undocumented border crossers and smugglers. The
variety of Carrizo cane that is common in the Laredo-Del Rio borderlands
is from the region of Valencia, Spain.

Possibly beginning next week, the US Border Patrol could commence aerial
herbicide spraying along a slice of the Rio Grande between the twin cities
of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. The experimental spraying
would cover an area that stretches 1.1 miles between the Laredo Railroad
Bridge and Laredo Community College directly across from Mexico, said
Roque Sarinana, public affairs officer for the Border Patrol’s Laredo
sector.

In addition to aerial spraying of the herbicide imazapyr, the Border
Patrol will employ hand-cutting and mechanical methods that involve
applying the killer chemical at ground-level, Sarinana told Frontera
NorteSur in an a phone interview. Getting rid of Carrizo cane should
improve the Border Patrol’s “line of sight up and down the river, ”
Sarinana said.

Depending on weather conditions, the first dustings of imazapyr could
begin March 25, Sarinana confirmed. “As of now, that’s the plan,” he said.

Concerned about risks to public health from possible herbicide spray
drift, runoff and leaching, officials from the city government of
neighboring Nuevo Laredo are steadfastly opposed to aerial spraying. “I’ve
always been respectful of the law and sovereignty,” said Nuevo Laredo
Mayor Ramon Garza Barrios. “But herbicides that affect health in both
countries can’t be sprayed.”

Mayor Garza’s stance is supported by other elected and appointed officials
in Mexico. On Thursday, March 19, the Tamaulipas State Legislature issued
a statement requesting information about the proposed spraying from the
Mexican and US sections of the International Boundary and Water Commission
as well as Mexican federal agencies.

The zone targeted for spraying is across the Rio Grande from Nuevo
Laredo’s Hidalgo neighborhood and only hundreds of yards from the Mexican
city’s public water intake system.

Carlos Montiel Saeb, general manager for Nuevo Laredo’s water utility,
said the Border Patrol advised his office to turn off water pumps a few
hours prior to spraying. “If there is no problem, why are they asking us
to do this?” Montiel questioned.

Border Patrol spokesman Sarinana said he had not seen a written objection
from Mayor Garza, but stressed it did not mean other US officials had not
received a letter. “This is all in the works, so we’ll see what happens,”
Sarinana said, adding the Border Patrol plans on releasing a more detailed
statement about the future of the Carrizo cane project.

Opposition to the Border Patrol’s aerial spraying plans is likewise
growing in Laredo, Texas. The two sides turned out to a March 16 meeting
of the Laredo City Council in which elected officials narrowly approved by
a controversial 5-4 vote an easement for the US government on city
property targeted for spraying.

Jay J. Johnson Castro, Sr., executive director of the Rio Grande
International Studies Center at Laredo Community College told Frontera
NorteSur the planned aerial spraying caught residents off guard. The
aerial applications could threaten more than 1,000 bird and other species
at a time when spring hatchings begin and migratory birds are still in the
area, Johnson said by phone from his office. The Border Patrol’s Carrizo
Cane Eradication Project abuts a nature trail running near the community
college, Johnson lamented.

“Nobody knows the impact of imazapyr,” Johnson contended. “It’s no
different than Agent Orange.” Citing the program’s environmental
assessment, Johnson said aerial spraying could eventually extend along a
strip of river bank 16 miles upriver from the pilot project zone. Despite
the potential magnitude of the project, the Border Patrol did not gather
local input as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, Johnson
charged.

Like virtually all chemical pest control agents, lack of complete public
information and multiple, contradictory reports surround the history of
imazapyr, a substance first registered in 1984 and currently manufactured
under the trade name Habitat by the multinational BASF corporation.

A fact sheet prepared by the Washington State Department of Agriculture
reported imazapyr was “low in toxicity to invertebrates and practically
non-toxic to fish, birds and mammals.” Still, the fact sheet reported
imazapyr was highly mobile and persistent in soils.

In 2007, BASF spokesman Joel Vollmer told the press his company’s imazapyr
product was widely used in wildlife refuges across the US and along the
Pecos River and its tributaries to control salt cedar, another
troublesome, invasive plant species afflicting the US Southwest.

Public controversies over imazapyr applications have previously erupted in
Alaska, California and Colombia, where experimental use of the herbicide
to control illegal coca plantings was approved in 2000. A report on the
chemical’s history developed for the non-governmental group Alaska
Community Action on Toxics said evidence existed that identified imazapyr
as a contaminant of soil, groundwater and surface water. Imazapyr also
contains an acid that can irritate the eyes, skin and respiratory system,
the report stated. According to the report’s authors, additional evidence
linked the herbicide to Parkinson’s Disease-like symptoms.

In developing its Carrizo cane aerial spraying project, the Border Patrol
ignored studies by Laredo Community College researchers that examined
different means of killing off the invasive species, Johnson charged.

“We are not opposed to the eradication of Carrizo,” he affirmed. “We think
it has to go because it consumes about 500 gallons of water per meter and
chokes out native vegetation.”

At the federal level, Department of Homeland Security-sponsored
researchers earlier explored using biological controls, including wasps,
to control Carrizo cane.

US officials have been urging a Carrizo cane eradication program for some
time. In 2007, US Representative Henry J. Cuellar (D-Tx) called the tall,
thirsty plant a national security issue. Quoted in the news media, Rep.
Cuellar said then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had been to
the border to get a first-hand look at the Carrizo cane foe. The Laredo
Congressman assured the press officials were “looking at what is the
fastest, safest way to address the effectiveness of addressing this issue
of Carrizo.”

With the clock ticking, Johnson and a growing network of activists on both
sides of the border are lobbying high officials to prevent aerial spraying
before it occurs.

In an e-mail, longtime border environmental advocate and Sierra Club
activist Bill Addington contended spraying would violate the 1983 La Paz
accord between the United States and Mexico that requires mutual
notification in the event of projects impacting the environment within a
60 mile radius on either side of the border.

“We considering all democratic options-court actions, political protests,
media attention,” Johnson added. “We expect our message to be heard by the
environmentally-friendly Obama administration. This is too unprecedented
to aerially spray a toxic chemical in a densely-populated area.”

Meanwhile, word of the planned herbicide spraying is spreading fast in the
two Laredos. Interviewed on the banks of the Rio Grande, a 26-year-old
Honduran migrant told the Mexican press he intended to cross into the US
without papers before spraying commenced. “They say they will put poison
into the river,” said Walter Hernandez. “That’s why I want to cross before
then.”

Mario Garcia, a Mexican national who frequents the Rio Grande on the Nuevo
Laredo side with his sons, also expressed concern to a Mexican reporter.
“I frequently come to fish in the area,” Garcia said. “With what degree of
confidence are we going to eat a fish if we know it is contaminated?”

In response to an article about the imazapyr controversy in the Laredo
Morning Times, several readers sent pointed e-mails to the news
publication that proposed solutions to the Carrizo cane issue or, as is
increasingly the case with border news web sites, used the immediate topic
at hand to vent ideological broadsides on issues of race, the environment
and US-Mexico relations.


Additional Sources: Enlineadirecta.info, March 19, 20 and 21, 2009.
Articles by Gaston Monge and Hugo Reyna. Laredo Morning Times, March 19,
2009. Article by Miguel Timoshenkov. Lider Informativo (Nuevo Laredo),
March 17, 2009. Article by Ericka Morales.

El Diario de Juarez, March 16, 2009. Commondreams.org/Inter Press Service,
March 16, 2009. Article by Helen Clark. La Jornada, March 8 and 11, 2009.
Articles by Carlos Figueroa and editorial staff. Rio Grande Guardian,
November 8, 2007. Homelandsecurity.org/journal/, April 2007. Article by
Gail Cleere. Panna.org (Pesticide Action Network) August 1, 2000 and April
11, 2008. Akaction.net (Alaska Community Action on Toxics.)


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