October, 01 2015, 10:30am EDT
Court Denies USDA Motion to Stop Legal Challenge to Rulemaking on Pesticide-contaminated Compost in the National Organic Law
Yesterday a federal court in California denied a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) motion to dismiss Center for Food Safety's (CFS) lawsuit challenging its allowance of pesticide-contaminated compost in organic food production without a formal rulemaking and a public comment period .
SAN FRANCISCO
Yesterday a federal court in California denied a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) motion to dismiss Center for Food Safety's (CFS) lawsuit challenging its allowance of pesticide-contaminated compost in organic food production without a formal rulemaking and a public comment period . USDA had argued that it could unilaterally open the new loophole through a guidance document, without giving the public and organic stakeholders the opportunity to participate and object. The plaintiffs, CFS, Center for Environmental Health, and Beyond Pesticides, were jointly represented by legal counsel from CFS and the Crag Law Center.
CFS senior attorney George Kimbrell, counsel in the case, lauded the decision: "We applaud the Court's decision denying USDA's motion, and ordering the case to move forward. The agency's unilateral action to allow compost contaminated with pesticides in organic production was contrary to federal rulemaking requirements as well as contrary to the high standards of organic integrity. We will continue to represent the organic community in holding USDA accountable."
"The judge clearly recognizes consumers' right to uphold the integrity of organic foods. This is a major victory for public participation in organic decision-making in the production of organic," added Lisa Bunin, Ph.D, senior organic policy director at Center for Food Safety.
Prior to the new contaminated compost guidance, organic regulations expressly prohibited fertilizers and compost from containing any synthetic substances not included on Organic's National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. According to Ralph Bloemers, attorney for the Crag Law Center "the new guidance radically changes organic requirements, allowing organic producers to use compost materials treated with synthetic pesticides." The USDA made the change without the required rulemaking process, usurping the public's right to ensure USDA activities are consistent with the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA).
OFPA requires that compost producers are responsible for identifying sources of feedstocks used in compost to ensure that only allowable plant and animal materials make their way into compost. The new NOP guidance violates OFPA by allowing green waste in compost to contain pesticide residues.
"In implementing organic law and growing the organic market with integrity, USDA must facilitate public input to ensure that it considers all the relevant science and current information on allowed practices and materials," said Jay Feldman, executive director at Beyond Pesticides.
"USDA's actions weaken the integrity of organic food production, not only by creating inconsistent organic production standards, but also by undermining the essential public participation function of organic policy-making," said Charles Margulis of the Center for Environmental Health.
The Court ruling can be found here: https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/41-order-denying-motion-to-dismiss_49070.pdf
The original complaint can be found here: https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/2015-4-14_dkt_1_-_pls_-_complaint_61471.pdf
Center for Food Safety's mission is to empower people, support farmers, and protect the earth from the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture. Through groundbreaking legal, scientific, and grassroots action, we protect and promote your right to safe food and the environment. CFS's successful legal cases collectively represent a landmark body of case law on food and agricultural issues.
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Breached Dam, Incineration of Soil Flood East Palestine With Fresh Fears of Toxins
"I've had fear and now this just put the anxiety over the top," said one local resident.
Mar 04, 2023
The collapse Friday night of a makeshift dam designed to hold back wastewater and new concerns by local groups and residents about the nearby incineration of contaminated soil from last month's train derailment are the latest anxiety-producing woes to behest the community of East Palestine, Ohio.
Watchdogs on the ground reported that the dam broke after heavy rains in the area on Friday.
According to local Channel 19 News:
Residents tell 19 News heavy rain has caused Leslie Run Creek to rise, and spill over the makeshift dam, near the derailment sight. 19 News was able to obtain several photos of water from that manmade dam covering the Main Street area of town.
Residents fear the contaminated water may seep into homes or businesses—causing another level of fear for those who live in the area.
Local resident Eric Cozza told the news outlet he was scared of what the released waters could do to the community. "I fear that now the chemical is in the ground, it's going to leech towards the water ducts, our aquifer for drinking water," Cozza said. "I'm concerned that the park is now contaminated. Kids won't be able to play there or walk through there on their way to school."
Status Coup News, which has been reporting from East Palestine and speaking with residents since the disaster occurred, reported Friday night that flooding from the breached dam was going "into The Original Roadhouse restaurant parking lot where a lot of locals eat and drink."
The outlet also reported that the pictures of the broken dam posted to social media were taken by local resident Neko Figley, who was told by contractors to leave the area because it was "super dangerous to be here right now.”
\u201cFrom our organizer in East Palestine: the dam constructed to hold back toxic waste has broken after today\u2019s heavy rain and the area is flooding. \n\nSafe homes and independent testing NOW.\u201d— River Valley Organizing (@River Valley Organizing) 1677890453
River Valley Organizing, a multi-racial, working-class group active in the Ohio River Valley region, said in a statement Friday that residents of East Palestine are still being ignored a month after 38 rail cars of a Norfolk Southern train went off the tracks on February 3.
"It's been one month since our lives were turned upside down," the group said, "but we still aren't getting what we need from the government or Norfolk Southern. We heard the people of this community loud and clear: they want safe homes, and independent environmental and health testing—now."
On Saturday, The Guardian reported on fresh fears over the incineration of contaminated soil that was taken from the crash site, not least because one of the nearby facilities where the material is being taken has a history of EPA violations. According to the Guardian:
The new plan is "horrifying," said Kyla Bennett, a former [EPA] official now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility non-profit. She is one among a number of public health advocates and local residents who have slammed Norfolk Southern and state and federal officials over the decision. [...]
Incinerating the soil is especially risky because some of the contaminants that residents and independent chemical experts fear is in the waste, like dioxins and PFAS, haven't been tested for by the EPA, and they do not incinerate easily, or cannot be incinerated.
"Why on earth would you take this already dramatically overburdened community and ship this stuff a few miles away only to have it deposited right back where it came from?" Bennett asked.
She further told the Guardian that the "most important thing in my mind is the human health and health of the environment" and that burning this toxic material under such conditions flies "in the face of basic human decency and science."
Penn Future, a watchdog for air and water quality in neighboring Pennsylvania, said the incineration plans are very worrying.
"The plan to incinerate dioxin and PFAS contaminated soil from Norfolk Southern's toxic spill deeply troubles us and will continue to build distrust and anxiety," the group said. "It's not clear the plan will work and puts communities down wind at risk of contamination."
According to an update from the office of Ohio's Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, the Ohio EPA has reported that approximately 1,700 tons of solid waste have been removed from the disaster site in East Palestine as of Friday.
Of that waste, reportsThe Chronicle-Telegram, 660 tons has gone to Heritage Thermal Services—the company with a litany of past violations—in East Liverpool, Ohio, which is in Columbiana County not far from East Palestine. Another 190 tons was hauled to the Giles incinerator for in-state burning and 880 tons of the solid waste was shipped out of state to landfills in Michigan and Indiana.
Meanwhile, 3.2 million gallons of liquid wastewater have been collected in the area with the large majority going out of state, to facilities in Michigan and Texas, for deep-well injection.
Amanda Kiger, director of River Valley Organizing, said one of her concerns was the incineration of toxin-laden materials so close to the residents still reeling in East Palestine.
EPA and other government officials, she told the Guardian, "are just dumping more shit on Columbiana county,” Kiger said."They say, 'We already poisoned them so it doesn't matter if we poison them more.'"
As for Cozza, who spoke with 19 News about the dam breach and whose family has already been diagnosed with skin irritations, he said the odor of chemicals is now back in the area.
"I have fear," he said. "I've had fear and now this just put the anxiety over the top."
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Democrats to Biden: 'Reject Willow Now and Protect the Arctic'
"It would be a victory for Big Oil and a huge step backwards on climate," warned Rep. Ro Khanna, who co-signed the letter.
Mar 04, 2023
Nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers from the U.S. Senate and House—as well as independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont—have written to President Joe Biden imploring him to put the last nail in the coffin of an "ill-conceived and misguided" oil and gas drilling project in Alaska that experts say would destroy the president's climate legacy if approved in any form.
Led by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Ed Markey(D-Mass.), Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, the letter urges Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to reject final approval of the 30-year ConocoPhillips' Willow Project in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve.
"No version of the Willow [Master Development Plan (MDP)] is consistent with your commitments to combat the climate crisis and promote environmental justice, especially as reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act, historic legislation on which we all collaborated to achieve these crucial goals," the letter states.
"If allowed to proceed," the lawmakers argue, the Willow project "would pose a significant threat to U.S. progress on climate issues," citing estimates that the project could unleash upwards of $19.8 billion in climate-related damages.
\u201c.@POTUS\u2014we must stop the Willow project. It is the largest proposed oil development project on federal lands and it threatens our environment, our planet, and our future. Reject Willow now and protect the Arctic.\u201d— Ed Markey(@Ed Markey) 1677878820
The letter comes days after White House officials floated the possibility of a scaled-back Willow Project, but environmentalists have said, as Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, that "no form of this project is OK."
The Burea of Land Management has estimated that even a scaled-back version would emit around 9.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year and Earthjustice, which has fought Willow in court, has warned that the approval request now before the Interior Department "would bring at least 219 wells, 267 miles of pipelines, and 30 miles of roads to a vast public lands area in Alaska's Western Arctic, permanently altering a globally significant and ecologically rich landscape."
\u201cThe Willow Project, a massive new drilling proposal in Alaska, would devastate local wildlife and lock us into decades of dirty energy. \n\nHere are two easy ways to tell the Biden Admin to #StopWilliow:\n\n1/ Sign @NRDC's petition here: https://t.co/s0FjtCHc9n\u201d— Julia Louis-Dreyfus (@Julia Louis-Dreyfus) 1677868714
In their letter, the lawmakers tell Biden and Haaland that the only course of action should be "no action," following the release of the final supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) on the project earlier this year. According to the letter:
The final SEIS includes a preferred alternative that would defer one drill site and require additional analysis for another, but we fear that the Willow MDP is intended to serve as an infrastructure hub that anchors a decades-long push towards increased drilling in the Western Arctic. Climate damage is unlikely to stop with the first phase of the Willow project; your Administration needs to draw the line now.
In a separate letter on Friday, the grassroots advocacy group Progressive Democrats of America also urged Biden to recognize the historic and legacy-building opportunity in rejecting the Willow project completely.
"We appeal to what is most honest, wise, and most courageous in you," states the group's letter, which was signed by leaders and members of PDA chapters nationwide. "To the elder in you. To the grandfather in you. Do not gamble with our lives and with the lives of generations yet unborn. Reject the Willow Oil Project."
"To the elder in you. To the grandfather in you. Do not gamble with our lives and with the lives of generations yet unborn. Reject the Willow Oil Project."
Grijalva and Markey were joined in the bicameral letter by Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif.), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Rep. Jamaal Bowman(D-N.Y.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal(D-Wash.), Rep. Ro Khanna(D-Calif.), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkley (D-Ore.), Rep. Gwen S. Moore (D-Wis.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-N.Y.), Sen. Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.), Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
"The Willow Project would lead to over 9 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year," said Rep. Khanna in a social media post Friday night. "It would be a victory for Big Oil and a huge step backwards on climate."
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UN Human Rights Chief Condemns Israeli Minister's 'Unfathomable' Threat to Huwara
Noting that communities like Huwara are often targeted by Israeli settlers, Amnesty's regional director urged Israel "to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, and to dismantle its system of apartheid against Palestinians."
Mar 03, 2023
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Friday called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for saying that Huwara, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, "needs to be wiped out" and "the state of Israel should do it."
Smotrich's comment Wednesday came after Israeli settlers on Sunday rampaged through Huwara, killing a 37-year-old Palestinian man—mass violence that came just hours after a Palestinian gunman murdered a pair of Israeli brothers, who were 19 and 21.
While presenting a report on Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine and "the current intensification of violence" to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Türk blasted Smotrich's remark as "an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility."
"Over half a century of occupation has led to widening dispossession, deepening deprivation, and recurring and severe violations of their rights, including the right to life."
More broadly, Türk lamented that "the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is a tragedy. A tragedy, above all, for the Palestinian people. Over half a century of occupation has led to widening dispossession, deepening deprivation, and recurring and severe violations of their rights, including the right to life. Nobody could wish to live this way—or imagine that forcing people into conditions of such desperation can lead to an enduring solution."
"2022 saw both the highest number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the past 17 years, and the highest number of Israelis killed since 2016," he highlighted. "This death toll has further, and sharply, deteriorated in the first weeks of 2023, and in the month that has just ended."
Türk's office found that over the reporting period, Israeli security forces frequently used lethal force, "regardless of the level of threat—and, at times, even as an initial measure, rather than as last resort." Researchers also documented "several cases of apparent extrajudicial, targeted killings" by such forces.
As the rights chief told the council, other key findings in the report include:
- Israeli security forces killed 131 Palestinians—including 65 people who were unarmed and did not engage in violence—and since 2017, fewer than 15% of such killings have been investigated, and fewer than 1% led to an indictment;
- Palestinians killed 13 Israelis—and nine more, including three children, have been killed in two attacks since then;
- Israel increasingly imposes collective punishments such as the blockade of Gaza, which are prohibited by international law, on Palestinians;
- 967 Palestinians are being held in "administrative detention," the highest number in 15 years; and
- There are over 270 illegal Israeli settlements across Palestine.
"The occupation is eating away at the health of both societies, on every level—from childhood to old age, and in every part of life," Türk stressed. "For this violence to end, the occupation must end. On all sides, there are people who know this."
The U.N. leader urged decision-makers in the region and around the world to heed the recommendations of his office's reports "and to step back from the precipice to which increasing extremism and violence have led."
\u201c"The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a tragedy," @UNHumanRights chief @volker_turk told the @UN Human Rights Council.\n\nFull STATEMENT at #HRC52 \u27a1\ufe0fhttps://t.co/Ay18urzszf\u201d— UN Human Rights Council \ud83d\udccd#HRC52 (@UN Human Rights Council \ud83d\udccd#HRC52) 1677865307
While the settler attack on Huwara drew rare widespread rebuke—including from Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a pair of conservative Jewish organizations in the United States—the Israeli government's recent shift to the right has stoked fears that violence in the region will only get worse and more frequent.
As Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said earlier this week, "The Israeli settlers burning down Palestinian homes and attacking Palestinians in the street are supported by the Israeli military and the Israeli government."
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa, declared Friday that "under Israel's apartheid system, impunity reigns."
"Despite the intensity and scale of Sunday's attacks, which resulted in the killing of one Palestinian and the wounding of nearly 400 more, and despite a rare show of international condemnation of settler violence, Israeli police yesterday released six suspects who were arrested in connection with the attacks," she noted. "Meanwhile two others have been issued with administrative detention orders, which violate international law."
\u201c#Huwwara - Impunity reigns for perpetrators of settler violence. "@amnesty reiterates its call on #Israeli authorities to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, & to dismantle its system of #apartheid against #Palestinians." https://t.co/Smn9VnPjLe\u201d— Khulood Badawi (@Khulood Badawi) 1677863325
Like Miller, Morayef emphasized that "Israeli authorities have long enabled and incited settler attacks against Palestinians, and in some cases soldiers have directly participated."
"State-backed settler violence is endemic in the occupied West Bank," she continued. "Towns and villages like Huwara, which was the epicenter of Sunday's attacks, are frequently targeted as they are surrounded by illegal settlements. For example, in October 2022, settlers broke into a school in Huwara where they smashed windows and beat teachers and pupils; less than two weeks later a café was set on fire, and groups of settlers assaulted Palestinian residents with pipes and rocks."
"Amnesty International reiterates its call on Israeli authorities to remove all settlements, which are war crimes under international law, and to dismantle its system of apartheid against Palestinians," Morayef added. "Apartheid is a crime against humanity and violence against civilians will continue for as long as it is in place."
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