Golf course pesticides still a growing threat to the ecosystem
by Dr. Robert H. Faust and Dr. Robert H. Richmond
|
(Updated 2003)
This article was written during the golf course development boom of the early 90’s when Asian investors were buying and trying to develop land on the Kona coast. When these projects fell through the land was purchased at discount prices from the former owners. The land is now in the hands of mainland developers.
There are more alternatives now as the biological products enter the market so there is less of an excuse to use these toxic persistent chemicals. The developers see pesticides as a “magic bullet” to protect “their” investment from unknown (to them) threats, and all the chemical dealers and university extensions tells them pesticides are the way to do it.
The developers seem to think they will not have a quality course, or that somehow they will be “less competitive” if they don’t use the cook book of pesticides the agrochemical industry offers on a weekly basis to their superintendents. They do not seem to understand that the public is more interested in a clean and healthy environment and water then they are a cosmetically perfect golf course that exposes the users to toxic genetic chemicals and known carcinogens.
The developers who have understood this have developed environmentally sensitive golf courses with the help of Audubon International. Greg Norman, famous golf champ and golf course designer, has built such a golf community in Florida and it is a great success, proving the viability of an ecologically sensitive project where a golf course can provide a habitat for wildlife instead of a threat to the delicate ecosystem.
Coastal lava plains with sensitive underground caves systems that supply the fresh water we must have to survive also drain into the sea, carrying every thing we put into the ground water. At the present time, it nearly all goes into the ground water already from cess pools. We should not now add another source of problems, especially problems from activities not essential for life or survival. Not only are golf courses not needed, it is also not necessary to poison the environment to have a golf course.
It would seem the heigth of folly to risk damaging the unique oceanic resource we have. More people come to dive, snorkel, watch whales and birds and go fishing than they do to play golf. People can play golf anywhere. They always think it will bring golfers from Asia who are willing to pay the high cost. The problem is, Japan now has 15,000 golf courses on over 2 millions acres of land.
The golf course boom demand equation has caught up with them, so golf alone will not bring people to the Big Island. A clean healthy environment, with good water and air and friendly people is what is rare in the world, and if we want Hawaii to be a place where people visit, then we should expand and enhance what we have. This makes the requirement for an ecological golf course obvious.
The word being spread around Hawaii by developers and consultants to the golf course industry is that agrochemicals used on proposed and existing golf courses are safe and harmless to the environment. They are basing these statements on several half-truths that circulate, and in many cases placate the fears of the citizens on the issue. The basic statements and my response to them are as follows:
There are no studies that show that these chemicals are harming the environment when used on golf courses in Hawaii, even when they are right next to tropical coral reefs.
The theory seems to be "no scientific evidence" is good evidence, even when as many as 40% of the reef fish off of the Kawaihae area contain the ciguatera toxin, 50% of the lemon and browned barred butterfly fish in areas of the state associated with runoff of chemicals have tumors and over 60% of the endangered green sea turtles have fibropapilloma tumors, which in many cases are so severe that they cause death of the animal due to interference with swimming or blinding from eye tumors.
Direct communication with the scientists who published this shocking data indicated a belief that pesticides are involved either directly as toxic genetic chemicals or indirectly as immune system suppressors, but since funding was cut or never provided the scientists have been unable to provide the scientific evidence to prove the link between chemicals and this marine disaster. Since no studies have proven or disproven the connection between the use of toxic genetic chemicals and these recent and serious ecological aberrations, the correct and logical response would be to ban the use of these chemicals until all the answers have been provided and research has been funded.
Because there is no scientific data does not mean we should let golf courses use pesticides in a totally unrestricted and unmonitored manner, as this really constitutes an experiment on the environment which we, the citizens will have to live with, not the developers from other places. The government of certain states in Japan, New York and other states have already done studies and have banned golf course pesticides due to findings of contamination of the water table by these pesticides and fertilizers.
Now developers come to carve up the prize and build golf courses on coastal lava flows and sell houses and lots. How unaware and naive they must think the people of Hawaii are. These mainland developers can come here and tell us the use of these chemicals here, in a far more delicate and pristine environment, are "safe" because no studies have been done to prove otherwise and they have a cadre of paid “Dr. Experts” to back them up.
Why should we care about a few fish and turtles getting cancer?
This is a response you might get from golf course promoters or the general public. Sea life developing different forms of cancer is an indication of something wrong in the environment; this is not normal. Turtles have managed to survive in
these waters since before the dinosaurs. Only now are they on the verge of extinction, and only since the 70’s have the cancers been showing up. Cancer can be in over 60% of the turtle population now. The damage might have been
done years before, in the egg formation due to genetic damage to the parents. The situation with the butterfly fish can be compared with the practice of putting a canary bird in a mine as a biological indicator of toxic gas at human sub-lethal levels so you could evacuate before toxic levels are reached for man. The butterfly fish tumor is a portent of things to come, which could easily include an unraveling of the ecosystem and loss of the resources similar to what we are now seeing happen to the Florida Keys.
These chemicals are all registered by the EPA and proven safe.
This is the biggest lie of the "big lies", as the EPA's office of pesticide programs was mandated by Congress in 1972 to reregister hundreds of pesticides which lacked the health and safety data required by law, despite the fact that they were "registered by the EPA" by 1976, the original deadline for reregistration. The OPP had made little progress so Congress extended the deadline to 1978. When the EPA missed this deadline Congress then waived any specific deadline. Ten years later only a handful of pesticides had been reregistered.
This so enraged Congress that the EPA was requested to draw up an "accelerated reregistration" to be completed by 1997. To make a long story short, the public has been hearing about reregistration for 18 years, and meanwhile many of the 700 active ingredients subject to reregistration are still being used, untested and unassessed. It is also important to note that the data supplied to the EPA for pesticide registration comes from the chemical companies, not from independent testing by the government.
Much of the data has been distorted by these companies, which is what prompted reregistration in the first place. Again the point is, why should the people and wildlife of Hawaii take part in a massive experiment with unproved and untested toxic genetic chemicals applied by chemical amateurs. It is not clear how we would benefit from golf courses for private membership in the first place, and it is becoming clear that we may lose our way of life and our food and recreation sources, the inshore reef ecosystem.
This huge loss may result just to give the few the convenience of using turf chemicals when nontoxic, bio-rational and integrated pest management options are now available to make the use of these toxic genetic chemicals obsolete anyway. Golf courses are seen as important markets for the gigantic petrochemical industry, which spends millions on marketing and disinformation campaigns. Most of the golf courses in Hawaii get information directly from chemical company fieldmen on unlimited expense accounts. University researchers receive most of their grant money for pesticide research from these giant companies. Very little if any funding is made for nontoxic approaches.
A researcher at the East-West Center who was making real strides in nontoxic neem tree based pesticides had his entire program cut, probably because he was getting close to a program which would displace imported petrochemicals by the use of locally grown neem insecticides which have been used in the Indo-Pakistan area safely for thousands of years.
Of the 40 pesticides that comprise over 95% of the chemicals used by the turf grass industry, 12 are suspected carcinogens, 21 have been shown to cause long term health effects in lab animals or humans, and 20 have been shown to cause short range damage to the human central nervous system. The local employees are forced to spray these chemicals to keep their job. I have observed spraying in high winds which is in violation of federal laws, so pesticides are affecting all the employees at these golf courses including the unsuspecting golfers.
The workers complain quietly, if at all, to avoid losing their jobs. Their children may be the next victims, as studies at UCLA Medical School show a higher incidence of childhood cancers in families of people who work with pesticides. Studies in Kansas proved that Kansas farmers who have applied 2,4-D to control weeds have a high incidence of lymphatic cancers. The herbicides 2,4-D is applied as often as 3 time per year.
A recent study of 1,497 rural counties by the USDA attempted to determine predictors of cancer mortality. Agrochemical use was the best predictor of cancer mortality among nine variables tested in five multiple regression cancer models. Herbicides were associated with genital, lymphatic and digestive cancer and insecticides had a positive relationship to respiratory cancer. (Beneath The Bottom Line, 1990, OAT, Congress of the U.S.)
This same book indicated that 7 or 8 of the main golf course chemicals are on the list called “Pesticides with high potential for leaching to groundwater.” The 7 chemicals are used singly or in combination on all local golf courses. New development golf courses are listed in the applicants EIS reports. They disguise two of the worst compounds, 2-4D and Banvel® (dicamba acid), by using the product brand name Trimec®, a witches brew of the two herbicides above plus mecoprop. It is interesting to note that on recent EIS reports this is the only thing listed as a brand name, the rest of the chemicals which are less known are listed generically. This is clearly a ploy to omit 2 compounds which are on the target list for high contamination potential with proven carcinogens and toxic genetic chemistry.
Everyone should also be aware that to maintain a single species ecosystem - what a golf course strives to be - goes against the driving force of nature, which is biological succession. Nature will strive to make the golf course a forest or brush land again, and this starts with weeds, including many very potent exotic weeds. So we have a real full-blown war against nature to keep the single grass species. This war on nature uses petrochemical based toxic genetic chemicals and concentrated mineral salt fertilizers in the war against the forces of succession. It is a war we can't win, but we do enormous damage when we try.
Irrigation with salty water in arid areas has produced a succession of failure and loss of productive lands to the desert for centuries. Now we can speed it up with fossil fuel energy. How can this risk be justified, less than 3% of the public plays golf, and many of the golf courses proposed for Hawaii are private clubs. A few people will become very rich and the rest of us have to live with it and eventually will have to pay to clean it up. By then the reef and the memories of clear waters filled with fish will be gone forever along with the canoes, the taro patches and isolated beaches.
The soil will hold these pesticides and prevent their leaching into the ground water.
This oversimplification is the basis for the claim that application of one to two feet of soil will somehow prevent or breakdown these chemicals. The properties required in the soil to detoxify or hold these pesticides requires the presence of organic matter and biological activity, i.e. a living soil. The problem is that after all the salt, fertilizers and biocides are applied there is no soil life left. After a few years of removing grass clippings and oxidation of sparse organic matters found in the soil, there is no organic matter left, let alone the high molecular weight humic acids which are required to do the job.
Salts dissolve and transport organic matter, causing black alkali which has destroyed millions of acres irrigated with brackish water. The effect is from sodium which not only dissolves organic matter, it also causes the soil the swell when water is applied and crack when it dries. The soil becomes gummy and the salts build on the surface, making plant growth more and more difficult as salt tolerant weeds replace turf grasses. This is what is known as decertification or soil water logging. This is not a new phenomenon; it is what destroyed much of the Middle East including the area of Iraq which was called the fertile crescent and the area which is now Iran.
We can do the job fast today by drilling wells and burning fossil fuels to pump a million gallons a day of salty water on the average golf course. This is a proven recipe for ecological disaster which has been repeated over and over again wherever irrigation is introduced to an arid or decertifying region. Who pays to reclaim this man made desert when these golf courses fail due to salt buildup?
It is ironic to note that soils with a high cation exchange capacity are needed to hold fertilizer and pesticides in the surface layer but it is these same soils which are the most easily effected by salts, as the sodium ion is the most soluble and displaces other ions, eventually dominating the soil, causing a slick, impervious slimy soil which only grows weeds at best. If more porous soils are used such as cindersoil or depleted cane land soil (which introduces nematodes, diseases and more pesticides) these permeable low CEC and low organic matter soils are not going to be seriously effected by salts, but all the fertilizers and pesticides put on the ground end up in the ground water and are carried into the ocean.
Therefore, imported soil on a lava flow in an arid area of the island is a short term unsustainable system or a potent pollution source regardless of what soil is used. I predict a dust bowl effect at some point as the water salinity and toxins build to a point where plants won't grow, the irrigation system is abandoned and the powdery defloculated soil blows around the island and coastal areas depositing it's load of toxic genetic chemicals to effect generations of people and wildlife yet unborn. The fish and turtle cancers are only early warning systems - we can be next.
Fertilizers from golf courses are not entering or causing harm to our waters.
The data does not indicate this and only industry apologists keep making this claim. Fishermen, divers and other people living in the real world and not the dream world or ivory tower of the corporate boardroom know that the reef is dying off of the Waikaloa area. I have heard this “unscientific” assertion from commercial fishermen, recreation divers and other "waterpeople". I have observed the algae-covered coral, the dead and bleached coral and the cancerous fish myself, and we only have a handful of golf courses now, not the 35-40 proposed by the fast buck carpetbaggers.
Any one with a diving mask and snorkel can find the fresh water springs close to shore and observe the algal growth there and the dead coral nearby. The Florida Keys have died or are dying for the same reasons our reefs are dying - it is time to learn from the mistake of others; we cannot let it happen here.
Certainly golf courses are not the main culprit in nutrient pollution and shouldn't be singled out since so much of the pollution comes from cesspools and other obsolete sewage disposal methods. Cesspools are legal in Hawaii and non-polluting sewage treatment methods like septic systems are discouraged by state officials. The state is a major polluter of Kealakekua Bay by continuing to use cesspools at the park on the bay and allowing the use of cesspools even in new developments. Fortunately many people, including developers, have chosen voluntarily to use a septic system instead of cesspool, so it seems that the DOH is not a leader in environmental protection, it is a major part of the problem.
Monitoring of Ground Water For Toxins will Prevent Risk
Even the Army Corps of Engineers has problems with the monitoring approach for our coastal resources. Their logical reason is the same as mine. What good is monitoring with out a response plan, for which the developer has none. There is no technically feasible or economically possible method for removing 34 possible pesticides used on golf courses from ground water once it’s there, and no plans to monitor the dozens of breakdown products and toxic impurities produced by these chemical. In fact their so-called monitoring plan on Anchialine ponds is a pure charade with only pesticides being tested that are no longer used and none of the toxic fungicides that we know are toxic to invertebrates.
The Anchialine ponds will be protected!
There is no scientific basis for their claim. We know very little about their unique ecosystems. In fact, the ponds are merely windows to an underground ecosystem that is said to contain 90 different animals, some only found in Hawaii and one or two other places. Some of these animals were only recently discovered (1986).
In any event most of these rare animals are in underground caves and passages directly under the golf course proposed by the Kohanaiki developers. The plan is to spread a foot of cinder soil on the lava surface, then pump weekly applications of fertilizers - and up to 10 different chemicals, by their own admission - on this cinder which, leached by irrigation, will go right into this underground ecosystem teeming with life which may contribute greatly to the near shore fish food chain, and therefore the basis of a food chain that includes man at the top.
What a foolish and wicked situation. The golf industry has no right to disturb this ecosystem in any way. It is a national treasure of the Hawaiian people, and may be responsible for making survival possible here for the Hawaiian pioneers that where here first. We have no right to destroy this unique and special place for a totally un-unique and unsustainable golf course development. Golf courses are the direct opposite of a normal ecosystem which is seeking more diversity and complexity. The goal of a golf course is to chemically restrict diversity and try to maintain a perverted, simplified ecosystem which consists of only man and one species of hybrid grass which has to be constantly protected from fungus and insects.
To even assume this is possible is foolish, as resistance is rapidly established and insects and disease will devastate the golf course eventually - but by then we have destroyed a productive and beneficial ecosystem that had sustained the people for over 800 years. We do this thinking that somehow all these golf courses will benefit the “people”. That I find hard to believe. We have already made fishing in these water dangerous from toxins produced by algal symbiosis stimulated by nutrient pollution from are cess pools and wasteful agriculture addicted to excessive use of fertilizers.
Can we allow golf courses to add to this problem before we even clean up the problem we have already created by careless use of resources? I am sure the earth will survive - the problem is how can we survive on an island 2500 miles from the Mainland and totally dependent on gold for our livelihood. This is a Twilight Zone story, at best.
Maybe with a little Star Trek thrown in for good measure. That's right - we can go to the Kau spaceport and leave this island for other planets when golf courses based on toxic technology destroy our land and economy, and development makes agriculture impossible. Let’s hope we don’t have to travel to space to survive, because that’s not real either. Space travel depletes our bones of calcium, making us a human jellyfish in the time it would take only to get to Mars - which is uninhabitable.
For more information, go to:
http://utenti.lycos.it/dossierisarenas/manifest.htm
Dr. Robert H. Faust, Ph.D.
Agroecologist and pest control advisor (PCA)
Robert H. Richmond, Ph.D.
Professor of Marine Biology
Marine Laboratory
University of Guam
|
|
