BEAT's Blog

Last October, DuPont, the same chemical company that invented chlorofluorocarbons, began marketing a new, “environmentally friendly” lawn chemical called Imprelis.  You may not have heard of it because only licensed professionals can apply it to your lawn.  Hooray!  An environmentally friendly herbicide!  Well, that’s how it was marketed anyway.

In late May, the reports started coming in.  Trees were dying where Imprelis was applied.  And not on a small scale either.  Imprelis was snapped up by landscapers and lawn chemical companies in amazing quantities.  For instance, The Columbus Dispatch reports that “Industry sources estimate that 75 percent of central Ohio landscapers and golf courses switched to Imprelis this year.”

From Iowa to the east coast and as far south as Georgia, trees are dying, and the “environmentally friendly” herbicide Imprelis is the chief suspect.  After spraying  Imprelis on hundreds of lawns in Michigan, Matt Coats of Underwood Nursery says his company began receiving angry calls.  “The customers are calling: ‘My trees are dying, what’s up?’  Underwood said. “We’ve never experienced anything like this.”

Property owner and Underwood client Teddy Peace complained that 8 of his 50 trees have been damaged.  He’s holding the Underwood Nursery financially responsible.  The nursery is insured, but $500 deductible per incident means that reparations have already cost Underwood $150,000.

Matt Coats told the New York Times, “We’ve made 1,000 applications and had 350 complaints of dead trees, and it’s climbing. I’ve done nothing for the last three weeks but deal with angry customers.”  One lawn-care worker called this the Katrina of the landscaping industry, and it’s just beginning. Read more…

As I’m writing this, my country is dangerously close to defaulting on its debts for the first time in its history.  Standard and Poor says that if this happens, it will lower the country’s credit rating from AAA to D.  We’re in hard economic times and we have to make some tough decisions.  Legislators have decided that one program we can afford to cut is the Environmental Protection Agency. They say EPA’s regulations are costing money and slowing the economy.  The fact that these regulations save lives and protect our health doesn’t often come up in their arguments. If we really do need to cut a federal program, I have a better one to target – General Electric. Read more…

In yesterday’s blog I warned of the dangers of corporate influence in government. This issue is strongly affecting environmental issues. If you doubt this, ask yourself why it is that we have to fight so hard to get GE to clean PCBs from the Housatonic River. If you or I dumped a million pounds of a pollutant in a river, would we be in any trouble? Would there be consequences? Recently the Supreme Court of the United States, in Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission, decided that we didn’t have quite enough corporate influence in government. Here’s MSNBC’s Rachel Madow putting this decision in perspective.

Corporate influence in government has gotten out of hand. Now you might say, “BEAT is an environmental organization. You focus on environmental issues. Why do you care about corporate influence in government?” Two reasons: regulation and enforcement. Regulation provides the rules that protect the environment. Enforcement ensures that the rules are followed.

We’ve notice a trend lately. Legislators are doing their best to limit the powers of regulators, and the regulators are showing less and less interest in enforcing regulations. This trend is evident at federal, state, and local levels of government. Is this trend related to corporate influence in government? Absolutely. Read more…