First, the chain of events that led to the settlement: Over four years ago, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, Golden Gate Audubon, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Californians for Renewable Energy (CARE), and many of the largest owner/operators of Altamont’s wind turbines began to meet to figure out how to reduce bird kills at Altamont. When the county approved new use permits for the turbines in 2004 without requiring the wind companies to reduce the bird kills, CBD filed a lawsuit, first in federal court and then in state court, against the energy companies for violating state and federal wildlife protection laws. CARE and Golden Gate Audubon joined CBD in an appeal when the county, which collects revenues connected to its turbine permitting process, issued 16 permits to turbine operators without requiring environmental reviews (EIRs) or stringent commitments to reduce bird mortality.

In late 2005, the Alameda County Supervisors partially rejected the environmental groups’ appeals and approved 29 permits covering more than 3,600 wind turbines. Audubon and CARE then filed a lawsuit against the county over its permit renewals, citing its failure to conduct EIRs before approving the permits, which violates the state’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CBD declined to join that suit, concerned joining might derail its own suit. But in a judicial sleight of hand, CBD’s lawsuit was joined with Audubon and CARE’s CEQA suits anyway, and in late 2006, the Alameda County CEQA court dismissed CBD’s lawsuit, overturning earlier complex court decisions that had allowed it to go forward. The Audubon/CEQA lawsuit was not dismissed.

From late 2005 through the end of 2006, Audubon and CARE conducted negotiations with the county and energy companies over the CEQA lawsuit. Finally a settlement was reached between the three major turbine operators, Golden Gate Audubon and four other local Audubons, and CARE, over the objections of Altamont’s scientific study group and CBD, which characterized the agreement as “a complete disaster for birds.” The county announced the settlement on January 5, and the Board of Supes approved it just three business days later without any meaningful input from other conservation groups or raptor biologists familiar with the bird kill issues at Altamont.

Cool Winds

Wind power is touted by people on all points of the political compass as an answer to growing energy needs and deficits. In 2004 California’s wind energy produced enough electricity to light a city the size of San Francisco. Almost all of the state’s wind-generating output is located at Altamont, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio Pass (near Los Angeles); in the ’90s, those sites produced almost a third of the world’s wind-generated electricity.

Wind energy production costs have decreased four times since 1980, thanks to better technology. Wind power uses less water than other types of energy production (the turbines don’t need water to generate their power), and eliminates drilling for natural gas. Relatively pollutant-free and renewable, wind could replace more problematic power sources such as nuclear plants. But nothing comes without a downside: Bird mortality has dogged the industry since the ’80s.

Established in 1982, the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area is the oldest and one of the largest wind farms in the nation. It covers about 73 square miles and over 50,000 acres with approximately 5,000 operating turbines. Every year, the earlier model turbines kill thousands of birds, over half of them raptors, when the birds collide with the spinning blades. The older turbines are far more deadly because they are mounted on towers 60 to 80 feet high, directly in the birds’ flight paths, while the newer models stand 200 to 260 feet high, thought to be above where birds of prey normally fly. The older turbines are also less efficient than their newer counterparts, so more are required for the same amount of work.

In a 2006 report to the American Wind Energy Association, researchers Lee Neher of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Shawn Smallwood, scientific expert on Altamont and a member of the county-appointed Scientific Research Committee (SRC), reported that raptors prefer flying at the older turbines’ height, as well as along ridge tops and canyons, where many turbines are sited.

Altamont’s turbines are situated on the Pacific Flyway, one of the world’s major migratory flight paths, and its grassy hillsides provide food for several types of raptors. It also has the highest known density of breeding and nesting golden eagles in the world. It’s an unusually dangerous place for birds, with raptors at special risk;if they’re stalking prey near turbine bases, they’re not looking out for much else. Said Golden Gate Audubon’s Elizabeth Murdock in the San Francisco Chronicle in September 2005, “Altamont Pass never would have been built if we had known how critical that site is& That project never would have gotten through the approval process.”

Mortality estimates in Smallwood and Carl Thelander’s 2004 report to the California Energy Commission (CEC) top 4,000 birds per year, including 1,300 raptors (an estimated 116 golden eagles, 380 burrowing owls, 300 red-tailed hawks, and hundreds of American kestrels, great horned owls, and ferruginous hawks are killed annually), and others totaling about 40 different species. The kills violate state/federal protection laws such as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act, and several California Fish and Game Code provisions. In 2006 industry consultant WEST conducted monitoring and confirmed raptor death estimates from the 2004 CEC report. In short, Altamont is America’s most lethal wind farm.

“I saw a rock dove flying into a rotor plane against a strong wind,” Smallwood recalls. “As it approached, the turbulence blew it back, and then the bird tried again. This time it flew all the way to the rotor plane, where it got struck and knocked about 50 meters away. I thought it was dead and went over to it … but it was still alive and flushed up and flew another 150 meters [before expiring]….I’ve seen a ferruginous hawk flying around with half a tail, and a golden eagle with no tail….

“An unknown number of these birds don’t die immediately,” Smallwood continues. “They’re taken away by scavengers patrolling the area.” Injured birds also sometimes manage to remove themselves before dying, creating a “crippling bias,” meaning injured birds that crawl away and die aren’t accounted for in kill estimates.

Deadlier than Ever?

The Audubon suit demanded that the county require wind companies to conduct extensive environmental review and demonstrate they were taking action to reduce kills in order to continue operation. The chief mitigation is obvious but costly—replacing older, lower turbines with newer, taller models, called repowering. But the new agreement covers only the signing parties, giving non-signing smaller turbine operators an out—and allows signing companies to use other mitigations to delay replacement of their older turbines.

Agreement terms include 50 percent mortality reduction from a 1,300 dead bird baseline by 2009; seasonal shutdowns for older turbines; shutting down the most lethal turbines by 2008; a turbine blade-painting study; rodent trapping; formation of a Natural Communities Conservation Plan (NCCP), intended to minimize kills of state-listed species covered by the Department of Fish and Game; and if the 50 percent mortality reduction isn’t achieved by 2009, adoption of an adaptive management plan that minimally impacts energy production.

Under the old system of county operating permits, all turbine operators were subject to repowering deadlines, and they had to adhere to recommendations made by Smallwood’s committee. The county attempted to satisfy concerns in its permitting process: It required seasonal shutdowns of turbines in the winter migratory season when bird deaths are particularly high; immediate shutdown of the most lethal turbines; credible monitoring of avian mortality; preparation of an EIR in three years to assess the problem of bird fatalities and the most effective ways to reduce them; and replacing 10 percent of the most problematic turbines by 2009 with fewer, more efficient, turbines, as well as an additional 25 percent replacement by 2013 and another 50 percent by 2015. In other words, 85 percent of the problematic turbines would have been replaced by 2015. In contrast, the settlement agreement allows all existing turbines to remain in place until 2018.

In addition, the smaller companies—those who didn’t sign on to the agreement—can avoid its measures as well as many of those contained in the county operating permits. And ironically, because there was no independent scientific analysis or EIR conducted relating to the agreement, the agreement itself likely violates CEQA, the very charge leveled by Audubon and the other plaintiffs.

The Devil’s in the Details

There are other problems as well. Close examination of the agreement reveals a troubling error: the baseline of 1,300 deaths annually for four raptor species (golden eagle, American kestrel, burrowing owl, red-tailed hawk) was actually the 2004 CEC report figure for all raptor deaths, about 12 species, raising the “permissible” deaths for these four. But even if the real figure (1,100 deaths for the four species) was used, permitting 550 of these raptors to be killed each year is excessive. The agreement may violate the state’s endangered species act (for species such as bald eagles) and other sections of the state’s Fish and Game Code, in addition to CEQA.

The agreement also changes how the number of deaths is figured. An adjustment factor for dead birds not found by searchers or removed by scavengers (multiplying the number of found carcasses by 3.15) was arbitrarily lowered and capped at 2.5. Rodent trapping is still allowed, though it may be illegal because wind companies must conduct environmental review and obtain permission from Fish and Wildlife or Fish and Game before commencing such activities. Rodents make burrows critical to the survival of protected species like the San Joaquin kit fox, California red-legged frog, and the burrowing owls that inhabit the area. Advised against in the 2004 CEC report, trapping may actually increase avian mortality because dead rodents attract birds to turbine areas.

Painting turbine blades to make them more visible to raptors is another questionable mitigation recommended by the settlement. It is an unproven method, and painted turbines can be exempted from seasonal shutdown requirements. Moreover, the agreement gives credit to turbines already shut down as far back as 2002, and phases out seasonal shutdowns by 2009. Many provisions from the 2005 use permits were included in the agreement, but those deadlines are now changed, and permit terms may be modified by the NCCP, which itself may be illegal because Fish and Game may not authorize “take” of federally protected species such as the bald eagle.

The agreement also alters the SRC’s role by giving the signing parties authority to monitor mitigation effectiveness and need for adjustments, relegating the SRC to data collectors and analysts. And because the agreement contains no independent mitigation monitoring or performance bond, it’s not clear how Audubon or the county will enforce the measures.

But most egregiously, the agreement and NCCP could allow the wind companies to opt out of the repowering provision that the county included in its 2005 operating permits, which required replacement of the old turbines with newer models by 2008. Yet Chris Gray, assistant to County Supervisor Board President Scott Haggerty, promises, “They’ll take the windmills down and replace them with a 1-to-10 ratio [one will replace ten old ones], at the cost of $5 million.” Gray did not specify how many turbines this applies to.

Says Gray, “The parties tried to come up with the most comprehensive plan to protect the avian population at Altamont and preserve green energy and wind power. It was a difficult challenge because … Altamont is right in a migratory path and in the middle of a golden eagle nesting ground…. This is good for the parties, but these were very tough negotiations, to which the three biggest wind companies agreed.”

Those companies insist they are concerned about avian mortality. Steve Stengel, communications director at FPL Energy, Altamont’s largest turbine owner/operator, wrote by email, “the Altamont Settlement helps answer questions about how injuries to birds can be addressed, while still providing Bay Area residents with all the environmental and economic benefits that wind energy production has to offer…. Our agreement gives us comfort that organizations such as Golden Gate Audubon and Alameda County will remain flexible, and that … future actions taken by the wind companies will be those that best fit the situation presented by the data.” FPL’s web site states it has removed or shut down approximately 10 percent of operating turbines at Altamont, including replacing 169 turbines with 31 modern units, and shutting down and removing or relocating nearly 100 additional models. Independent sources such as the county have not yet verified these figures.

No Argument with Wind

Was there pressure to settle? Why was the new agreement settled so quickly, provoking criticism on that front alone? Perhaps after such a lengthy and complex negotiation process, Audubon could no longer afford to continue its litigation. Golden Gate Audubon, which did not respond to interview requests, praised the agreement in its March 2007 newsletter The Gull: Author Elizabeth Murdock states that this is the “toughest avian protection ever imposed on the wind industry at Altamont Pass.”

But Alameda County Supervisor Supervisor Gail Steele says, “The agreement isn’t strong enough. It’s always about the dollar, right, versus what’s right for ecology? We all agree we want wind power, but I’m very discouraged and think we should’ve fought more&. I want to be fair, but I wasn’t supportive of the agreement.”

When asked to respond to criticisms that the agreement doesn’t contain sufficient protection, Gray says: “You could shut down all the turbines, but then you have to deal with the other kinds of energy that they were replacing: coal, gas& It’s a tough balance: The companies could then claim bankruptcy, and then you haven’t accomplished your goals….”

However, no environmental organization ever demanded complete shutdown. Smallwood is passionate about not pitting environmentalists against proponents of wind energy: “This is not an argument of wind power versus no wind power—it’s possible to mitigate these kills.” Earlier causes of avian fatalities at the wind farm, such as raptor electrocutions, have been nearly halted after changes made in the ’90s: insulating wire, covering exposed poles, and undergrounding power lines. But the current settlement doesn’t bind the wind companies to mitigation in any meaningful way; for instance, the companies could simply paint turbine blades to avoid recommendations.

For the Birds

If the wind companies don’t hold up their end of the agreement, to whom must they answer? According to Gray, “They are answerable to the county. We could add sanctions, we could change or add requirements of what they have to do…” Entities that could potentially enforce the settlement agreement include the signing parties and others, such as the California Attorney General’s Office and Fish and Game, both of which have failed to take any enforcement action despite 20 years of documented bird kills and legal violations.

The agreement may be affected by the proposed federal Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act, which includes new regulations for siting, building, and operating wind projects to avoid or minimize impacts to birds and bats, also harmed by turbine blades. At the same time, the House Ways and Means Committee is considering an extension of tax breaks for the wind power industry, although the American Bird Conservancy has testified that tax breaks should be conditioned upon wind developers doing their best to avoid bird and wildlife impacts.

In May, in his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Oceans, the Conservancy’s Michael Fry said, “Voluntary efforts to address the impacts of wind projects on birds and wildlife have been a failure. There has been much discussion and almost no real action on the part of the wind industry to resolve bird collision issues.” Ironically, the problems at Altamont may have hampered the wind industry as a whole. According to a 2002 WEST report to the Bonneville Power Administration: “Primarily due to concerns generated from observed raptor mortality at the Altamont Pass wind plant &new proposed wind projects both within and outside of California have received a great deal of scrutiny and environmental review. In the mid-1990s, development of wind projects were delayed, sometimes to a point that the project was not developed, due in part to avian collision concerns.”

According to the Conservancy, given the projected growth rate of the wind industry, between 900,000 and 1.8 million birds will likely be killed every year by wind turbines by 2030 unless protective measures are implemented. Fry says better siting of wind power plants and monitoring for migrating birds could help.

The avian mortality problem at Altamont illustrates the complex nature of energy production—even “good” sources such as wind have impacts. Smallwood is “aghast that our natural resource agencies—federal and state—allow the companies to do this when as an individual I can get a shotgun and shoot a golden eagle, but I’d go to jail.”

Conducting biodefense and nuclear weapons research in a crowded suburban setting has embroiled the lab in decades of controversies, with the same question at the bottom: What are the health risks to Bay Area residents and to the environment? After all, the lab investigates dangerous pathogens and detonates toxic substances, and now it’s being considered to research even deadlier pathogens in a Biosafety Level 4 lab. Moreover, it’s applied for a permit to increase its open-air explosives testing by a factor of eight.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) defines four Biosafety Levels based on the lethality of the pathogen, its infectious potential, and what types of experiments are performed upon it. The CDC has developed a protocol for each level, from wearing protective equipment at BSL1 to complete isolation of the facility from its surroundings at BSL4. BSL3 precautions are taken for work done on potentially lethal organisms that can be transmitted through the air. Included are anthrax and the bacteria that cause tuberculosis.

Though construction of a BSL3 facility at LLNL was completed in December 2005, the facility has never been used. Livermore-based activist group Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) began contesting the facility in 2002, when the Department of Energy proposed siting it at LLNL. In 2005, the group sought an injunction to prevent the facility from opening, and it has been caught up in litigation ever since. Despite this, LLNL is on the short list for a BSL4 facility funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

Tri-Valley CAREs staff attorney Loulena Miles has concerns about the level 3 facility beyond its possible health risk to Bay Area residents. She worries that conducting advanced biodefense research at a site that also engages in classified nuclear weapons research invites suspicion, since bioweapons research and biodefense research look very similar. “LLNL is not a neutral agency,” she says. “It looks bad because the US is putting an advanced biodefense lab together with a super secret nuclear research lab.”

Moreover, the Bush administration refused to sign the international Verification Protocol in 2001. The protocol would give an international oversight group the authority to enforce the Biological Weapons Convention. LLNL itself lacks a transparent oversight committee that would ensure that biodefense research doesn’t cross the line into bioweapons development. Miles believes the research planned for the BSL3 facility is more appropriate for a civilian lab, and that much of the research LLNL scientists want to pursue could be conducted at a BSL2 level, such as the work that went into developing BioWatch.

The lab’s BioWatch system is used in 30 cities across the nation to provide authorities with early warnings of a bioterrorist attack. The system, which uses air filters, tests for the presence of pathogens; each pathogen contains stretches of unique DNA sequences that can be used to identify them. Other research deals with quickly differentiating between different strains of a pathogen, such as anthrax; determining the ability of certain microorganisms to survive under a variety of environmental conditions; and developing a detection system similar to BioWatch that would alert people to the presence of mosquito-borne diseases.

Miles says there are a number of ways that pathogens could be accidentally released. To prevent contamination from the lab into the environment, High Efficiency Particulate Air filters, more commonly called HEPA filters, are used. Miles explains, “HEPA filters are prone to fail if they’re damaged by heat, smoke, explosions, or fire. LLNL seems to think that the HEPA filters will just work.” Lab workers can make human errors. A scientist exposed to a pathogen could carry it into his community, and the lab has a spotty history of minor incidents involving mislabeled or inappropriately stored materials. Then there’s the earthquake danger: LLNL is close to the Las Positas and Greenville fault lines. And it seems a tempting target for a terrorist attack.

Lab officials respond that BSL3 labs have operated safely with HEPA filters for decades—and in crowded areas. A BSL4 lab is located in Atlanta. Thankfully, there have been no major incidents or epidemics of lab-acquired infections spreading to a surrounding community. LLNL acknowledges that it has a history of accidents but says that none have had a significant impact on the community or the environment.

And lab officials point out that researchers at LLNL have been using strains of plague and anthrax since 2000. According to CDC guidelines, anthrax in clinical materials or in diagnostic quantities can be used at BSL2 labs. Guidelines for plague are similar. LLNL officials believe the new facility is earthquake-secure and that the risk of a terrorist attack is not significant. Plus, if there were an explosion due to a terrorist attack or a lab accident, the heat generated would kill most of the microorganisms around, says LLNL.

While the events leading to a breach in the BSL3 facility’s containment seem unlikely, a release could expose millions of people to dangerous microorganisms. The Environmental Impact Assessment defines a 50-mile radius around LLNL as the affected zone, and about seven million people live in that area. Nuclear physicist Matthew McKinzie developed computer simulations that show anthrax spores released into the air from LLNL spreading to San Francisco or further depending on weather conditions. Anthrax is one of the organisms that would be used in the facility, and its spores survive very well under extreme conditions.

Miles points out that research at the facility would be concerned mostly with pathogens that are “the most pernicious, the ones historically associated with weapons.” For obvious reasons, these tend to be hardier and more infectious than your run-of-the-mill germs. If an accident did take place, the results could be catastrophic.

Hold Your Breath

LLNL is a top contender for the Department of Homeland Security’s National Bio and Agro-defense Laboratory, a BSL4 facility, which would be housed at the lab’s Site 300, an explosives testing area near Tracy. According to the CDC, BSL4 precautions are used to work with “dangerous and exotic agents that pose a high individual risk of life-threatening disease, which may be transmitted through the aerosol route and for which there is no available vaccine or therapy.” In other words, if you breathe them in, you’re in deep trouble. The primary purpose of the facility would be to conduct research on diseases that affect agriculture and livestock, such as foot-and-mouth disease. However, it could also handle the most dangerous pathogens, including Ebola.

A number of groups involved in California agriculture, such as the Farm Bureau, the California Veterinary Association, and the Poultry Federation and Cattlemen’s Association, as well as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, welcome the lab. Siting the lab in the Bay Area gives researchers access to scientists and prestigious research institutes such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Davis, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and others that would foster a rich environment for scientific inquiry. Proponents argue that since California’s agricultural products feed much of the nation, plant and animal diseases here are a national food security risk and that the lab would provide a valuable resource to the state’s agriculture.

But others, including Tracy city councilmembers and Tri-Valley CAREs, oppose the lab. The planned BSL4 facility is much bigger than the lab’s BSL3 facility—according to Miles, “five Wal-Marts could fit inside it”—in order to provide space to house and experiment on large animals and birds. If these animals (mostly livestock) were to escape, they could carry diseases to animals and humans in surrounding areas. Since Tracy stands at the gateway to the Central Valley, the goal of protecting California’s agriculture could instead wreak havoc. Critics argue that siting the BSL4 lab in a place where there is a geographic barrier to agriculture makes more sense. Tri-Valley CAREs is considering bringing another lawsuit to prevent construction if the Department of Homeland Security chooses to house the Bio and Agro-defense Lab at Site 300.

Says UCSF assistant researcher Dr. Judith Flanagan, “In my experience of 20 years spent as a researcher, I am keenly aware that no matter what safety procedures are enforced accidents will happen.” Flanagan points to incidents discovered by investigative journalists, such as those involving a lab worker testing positive for anthrax and a package containing West Nile exploding in the Columbus, Ohio airport. She points out that accidents that occur under a culture of secrecy are likely not to be reported or admitted.

“Even when mistakes are not made,” she says, “unforeseen consequences of genetic modification of pathogenic organisms can produce devastating new super-bugs. For example, Australian researchers recently engineered a mouse disease to make the animals sterile. They inserted a new gene into the mouse pox virus as part of the genetic engineering process to create the bug that would make the mice sterile. But the extra gene did more than that; it transformed the mouse pox into a super strain that killed almost every mouse it came across. Now that’s a frightening bio-weapon if you’re a mouse—but mouse pox is very close to its human equivalent, smallpox.”

Bigger Booms

But the majority of LLNL’s research continues to be nuclear, some of which requires explosives testing. Currently, most of this testing is done in an enclosed facility at Site 300. Now LLNL is applying for a permit to increase the amount of open-air detonation of depleted uranium (DU) at Site 300 by a factor of eight, from 1,000 to 8,000 pounds per year.

DU is the uranium remaining after enriched uranium is formed from natural uranium. It can also come from reprocessing spent reactor fuel. Since most of the radioactive uranium has been removed, it is only weakly radioactive, which means it can be stored as low-level nuclear waste. Because it’s more expensive to store than to use, scientists have developed uses for DU. The military uses it for ammunition and in armor plating because of its high density. Non-military uses include counterweights in aircraft, dental porcelain, and as shields during medical imaging.

It becomes much more dangerous when detonated. When temperatures reach 3000 ¡ F, uranium catches fire, burns, and aerosolizes. Early studies assumed that DU particles would quickly settle out of the air so that people more than a few kilometers away would be unaffected. But nine days after the US began its 2003 “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq, DU particles were found in an air filter in England.

DU damages the reproductive system, causes birth defects, mutates DNA, and acts as a neurotoxin. Some suspect it of causing Gulf War Syndrome—immune system disorders, chronic fatigue, headaches, memory problems, loss of balance, and muscle and joint pain—as well as some cancers, though only circumstantial evidence exists. The US used DU in ammunition during the first Gulf War. Data from the Basra hospital and university show a 426 percent increase in cancers and a 600 percent increase in birth defects after the war, but other pollutants, such as those released from burning oil wells, could cause this spike as well.

It is unclear whether Livermore and Tracy residents are exposed to levels of DU sufficient to cause health problems, and it would be difficult to prove a causal relationship between DU exposure and health problems. Miles says she’s talked to a lot of residents who feel they have health problems because of the (DU) testing. Data showing high levels of uranium present in a child’s hair was presented at a Tracy city council meeting; the parents believe that uranium exposure is responsible for their child’s autism.

How much and how necessary is the risk? Very few of the seven million or more who might be at risk have participated in debate or even know about it. As with the DU drift, conventional wisdom and assurances can turn out to be best-case scenarios or unrealistic assessments. The political question is a matter of public policy, as lab sitings should be. A more thorough public process and transparent oversight of biodefense research would go a long way towards calming people’s fears. But ultimately we must decide what kind of research our tax dollars should fund.

The Farm Bill’s many elements are organized into ten “Titles.” One of the most contentious is Title I, which primarily subsidizes corn, soy, wheat, rice, and cotton. The federal government pays farmers to produce as much of these crops as possible. The effects of this free-market-tweaking policy could fill a book, but the most obvious is that farmers are rewarded for growing subsidized crops as monocrops for export, animal feed, and biofuels, rather than growing non-subsidized diverse market crops that could provide food for their surrounding communities and urban centers. According to the Congressional Research Service, the top 10 percent of farm-subsidy recipients (mostly corporations and absentee landowners) take in more than two-thirds of those payments.

This represents a considerable government giveaway to already-profitable farms. Last time the Farm Bill was passed, a coalition of Senators argued to lower the cap on subsidies from a half million to a quarter of a million dollars, claiming that “millionaire farmers” were reaping all the benefits of the legislation, and that it favored the consolidation of farms by pushing the smallest farms out of business and undermining the economic development of small farming communities.

The overproduction of these commodities has significant consequences. Because the prices of these crops are kept artificially low by government handouts, an enormous industry has sprung up around their byproducts—the oils, flours, starches, sugars, and food additives ubiquitous in junk food and the cheap feed that cattle eat at feedlots. In effect, the federal government is making bad food cheap. According to Michael Pollan, the real price of fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent between 1985 and 2000. In the same period, the price of soft drinks (which primarily consist of high fructose corn syrup) went down by 23 percent. Imagine—your tax dollars are paying for candied soda pop. The subsidies greatly impact what low-income individuals can afford to eat.

Ironically, Title IV manages the Food Stamp program, also providing nutrition outreach to low-income households, to encourage food stamp eligible citizens to consume more fresh fruits and vegetables—the very crops that the government doesn’t subsidize. In the past, urban area legislators have fixed their sights on the food stamp component and ignored most of the other Titles, including rural land-use issues.

This year, several urban legislators are taking the Food Stamp Challenge—that is, trying to eat for a week on $21, the typical allotment of a food stamp recipient. Early in June, Representative Barbara Lee could be found scouring the aisles of Berkeley’s Grocery Outlet, trying to spend her last $6 wisely. Unlike most food stampers, Lee was trailed by the press during her hunt through the store. Her message: it is impossible for people to eat a healthy diet on food stamp benefits, and multiple aspects of the Farm Bill must be addressed for this to change. The foods affordable to low-income families are the same that are creating a public health crisis of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related disease—and the same foods kept artificially cheap by government subsidies.

Conservation and the protection of water, air, wildlife habitat, and farmland is the concern of Title II, a category whose funding is chopped away every year by Bush’s budget. One of II’s provisions is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which rewards livestock and crop producers for making conservation and environmental improvements. Some of these improvements, however, you wouldn’t wish on your best friend—and certainly not your next door neighbor’s land.

Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists submitted an excellent brief to the House Committee on Agriculture, analyzing perverse incentives in Title II and recommending remedies. The organization is particularly critical of the EQIP provisions that actually underwrite and promote the expansion of large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which are bona-fide disasters from the standpoint of waste treatment, profligate use of antibiotics, and E. coli contamination.

Title III of the Farm Bill contains programs designed to develop and expand commercial outlets for US commodities. Unfortunately, the cheapness of the commodities subsidized by Title I gives our producers an unfair advantage over our so-called “free trade” agreement partners. Mexican corn growers, for example, cannot compete with the subsidized US corn that is dumped into their country, driving Mexican farmers out of business and indirectly creating economic refugees who may immigrate to urban centers in the US and elsewhere.

Title VII funds agricultural research and extension programs, including grants for food biosecurity and developing biotechnology crops for poor countries. In the last Farm Bill, a tiny wedge of funds was earmarked to support research and extension activities for organic agriculture. Needless to say, in Title VII and others, the federal government gives large-scale industrial agriculture and its methods a heavily weighted economic advantage over organic and small-scale family farms.

The behemoth Farm Bill of 2002 was launched with little fanfare. In the immediate wake of 9/11, Congress had little appetite for heated or prolonged debate about domestic issues, and we were about to invade Afghanistan. In the years since, skyrocketing obesity and Type II diabetes rates, E. coli scares, and books and films like Fast Food Nation, SuperSize Me, and the Omnivore’s Dilemma have alerted the public that all is not right with our food and farming systems. Finally, scrutiny is turning to the role the federal government plays in this mess.

The Farm Bill can be a powerful vehicle, capable of driving entrepreneurship and research, protecting species and restoring habitat, supporting public health, and strengthening rural communities and regional food systems. With enough public input, this year’s bill might just fulfill its promise.

Aside from uranium, mercury is the most toxic metal known to man; it takes only a few milligrams to kill you, and once it accumulates in your tissues, it can cause neurological problems and organ damage. Mercury toxicity in humans has been linked to chronic fatigue syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and kidney problems, and some believe it’s responsible for the alarming rise in autism and Alzheimer’s disease.

“We have a very serious problem here,” said Dr. Boyd Haley during a September 2006 clinical teleconference. Haley is chairman of the chemistry department at University of Kentucky, and he has conducted extensive research on mercury’s effects on brain and nerve tissue. “Every study of mercury on the human brain shows that it generates neuronal problems,” he said. “The American Dental Association (ADA) and the FDA ignore this, saying mercury is safe and has no effect on the brain. This is 100 percent wrong.”

Mercury compounds can enter the body through various pathways, including inhalation of vapor, ingestion, and skin contact. It’s found in paints, pesticides, batteries, fluorescent light bulbs, skin creams, vaccines, old-style thermometers, eye drops, and of course, those silver amalgam fillings in your mouth. Despite the American Dental Association’s best efforts to downplay the risk, mercury from amalgams is continually released, increasing as you chew food or gum. “Mercury comes off amalgam fillings at a rate much, much higher than the ADA spokespeople say it does,” says Haley. “Eighty percent that comes off the fillings is retained by the body.”

After ingestion, mercury binds with proteins and amino acids and is transported freely throughout the body, accumulating in tissues and crossing the blood-brain membrane barrier, which normally prevents toxins from entering the brain. Mercury and other heavy metals have the ability to pass through this semi-permeable barrier, where they become stored in the brain, wreaking havoc on the central nervous system. Over time, mercury leads to oxidative damage (think of a bicycle rusting inside your body), mitochondrial dysfunction (Remember high school biology? Mitochondria are cellular power generators, which explains why mercury toxicity causes fatigue), and eventually, cell death.

An element of the earth’s crust, mercury comes to us in three main forms. Elemental mercury, or quicksilver, is the shiny, slippery metal many of us remember from the dentist’s chair. Liquid at room temperature, it is used in thermometers and batteries as well as fillings. Inorganic mercury is used in fungicides, antiseptics, and some Chinese herbal medicines. Organic mercury is created when inorganic mercury combines with carbon. Burning coal, for instance, releases mercury particulates into the air, where they settle into bodies of water and are converted by microscopic organisms into methylmercury, the most common organic mercury compound in the environment. This is the kind found in fish; it accumulates up the food chain.

Says Caryn Mandelbaum, environmental health analyst at Marin’s Got Mercury?, a project of the Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN), “Now we’re seeing mercury levels higher than what the EPA is regulating. Mercury began to rise with the Industrial Revolution, so after a couple of centuries of industrialized factories, coal-burning plants, and crude oil, there are questions about what percent is man-made, but figures range up to 70 percent.” This is especially troubling because the most harmful forms of mercury have great staying power. Once it accumulates in the environment, Mandelbaum says she’s not aware of any method to remove it.

And the deadliest are organic mercury compounds. It takes only drops of a certain organic mercury compound to cause death. Methylmercury is the most stable (it remains stored in body tissues and is very difficult to excrete) and most easily absorbed by the body. From bacteria to plankton to herbivorous fish to predatory fish, it bio-accumulates, and in each species, the concentration increases. Humans receive the highest hit when they consume larger, predatory fish such as tuna, shark, or king mackerel. So how risky is it to eat fish these days?

“We’ve always known about heavy metals in the high seas,” says Mandelbaum. “But in the early ’90s, we saw a big consumer shift, a health consciousness to increase seafood in diets, and it became more apparent to us that this heightened consumption was bringing mercury into the food supply. By 2000, the diet industry was pushing tuna as the principal protein source to young girls and teens to keep their weights down. Also, sushi became really big, so these shifts were putting consumers at risk. TIRN decided the government wasn’t doing enough to raise awareness about the toxic effects of mercury in the food supply.” As a result, TIRN formed Got Mercury? to protect the environment and educate the public about the dangers of mercury.

Back in 1979, the FDA set action levels at one part per million as a safe level of mercury in fish, “but you may as well call them inaction levels,” says Mandlebaum, “because, to this date, the FDA hasn’t done anything to remove fish with really high mercury levels from stores. Got Mercury? has been pushing for all kinds of consumer awareness, including putting signs up in stores.”

Mandelbaum and her group began testing several years ago and found high mercury levels in seafood. “We started our campaign presenting swordfish as a dangerous fish due to the high mercury content. It’s one of the bigger fish in the sea, and the typical rule of thumb is the larger the fish, the more mercury.” California state officials now warn against eating fish from areas around the Delta, the San Joaquin River, and San Francisco Bay, which contains over 3,500 pounds of mercury, according to a recent study.

“Around 2003, the same time we were seeing really high levels in fish, there were medical reports coming out about women with mercury contamination in the Bay Area,” Mandelbaum notes. A Marin physician noticed recurring symptoms in her patients—fatigue, loss of motor skills, and loss of concentration—and she began testing for mercury. Out of 720 surveyed patients, she found 140 with mercury levels and exposure far higher than the levels set by the EPA.

In 2004, Got Mercury? lost a suit to have warning labels posted around shelves stocking canned tuna. The FDA intervened, stating the tuna industry could not be held accountable for mercury in tuna. “The FDA argues that 99 percent of mercury is naturally occurring,” Mandelbaum says, “but we’re seeing amounts in the tons emitted per year and falling into the sea. We think the FDA is under-reporting the threats of mercury in canned tuna because of commercial ties with the tuna industry.” These ties include USDA programs that supply canned tuna to the National School Lunch program, to Native Americans, to the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and to families in need.

Despite setbacks, Got Mercury? continues to pressure Bay Area supermarkets to post signs alerting consumers to the dangers associated with mercury and fish consumption. To date, only Andronico’s has posted warnings that children and pregnant and nursing mothers should not consume swordfish, shark, king mackerel, and tilefish. Mandelbaum says, “The Right to Know Law says consumers have a right to be informed about carcinogenic materials in their products and foods, and we’ll continue pushing the supermarkets to inform customers about how to protect their health. If only consumers had more knowledge to choose wisely, they could maintain healthy diets.”

Mandelbaum hopes that someday fish will be tested for mercury before it lands in supermarkets. “Just last March, the Canadian health department implemented a ban on any fish that has mercury levels greater than one part per million,” she says. “Now they’re doing random testing because ultimately, if you have an epidemic of mercury contamination with a population facing lower IQs, potential heart failure, and low motor function, that will cost the Health Department a whole lot more than taking some fish off the shelves.” In the meantime, Got Mercury? advises against eating more than six ounces of fish weekly and cautions against consuming high-risk fish. Switching to farmed fish is not without risk, as it can contain high levels of PCBs and other chemicals. Ultimately, Mandelbaum says, “We encourage shifting consumption to other sources of protein.” To calculate your mercury exposure based on how much fish you consume, go to www.gotmercury.org.

Pregnant women and their fetuses are at highest risk for mercury toxicity, because mercury travels easily across the placenta and becomes concentrated in developing fetal tissues, especially in the brain and liver. Pregnant women are cautioned against consuming swordfish and other mercury-tainted varieties. According to a 2004 estimate, one in every six women of childbearing age has enough mercury in her body to pose a risk to her child, and studies indicate that the developing fetus may have more difficulty excreting mercury than its mother. Many studies link mercury to the increase in autism and other developmental disorders.

Haley points out that the first case of Alzheimer’s on record occurred in 1903—50 years after dentists began using amalgam fillings. “The number one source of mercury exposure in our country is amalgam fillings,” says Dr. Kurt Woeller, an osteopathic physician in Temecula. Eighty-five percent of Woeller’s practice deals with children on the autistic spectrum; he believes autism is due in part to high levels of mercury and other heavy metals. “For most neurological conditions, mercury is one of the most under-diagnosed or under-recognized potential triggers, and it is so prevalent in our environment. The medical community has a good foundation for something like lead poisoning, but it’s amazing that when it comes to mercury poisoning, everyone turns a blind eye.”

Over three-quarters of adults have mouths full of amalgams. “There is no doubt, especially if you have a family history of neurological problems, that amalgams should be removed,” recommends Haley. Woeller is also an advocate for amalgam removal, especially for women thinking of becoming pregnant. Both say to use caution in selecting a dentist: dentists need to have proper training in safe amalgam removal.

How difficult is it to remove mercury from the body? “When it comes to treatment, we use chelation therapy,” says Woeller. Chelation therapy uses a chelating agent such as DMSA, a chemical compound that can cross the blood-brain barrier, to remove mercury from brain and body tissue. It has long been the standard of care treatment in both the conventional and alternative medical communities. “It’s controversial, but it’s medically necessary. There’s no other way to get this stuff out,” Woeller says.

In regards to limiting mercury exposure, Woeller says, “None of us lives in a bubble, so we’re not going to be able to avoid mercury 100 percent.” He advises directing attention to a clean living environment. “There are ways to decrease exposure. Limit high-risk fish consumption; get rid of sugar and junk food and incorporate whole, organic foods; never get amalgam fillings, and avoid thimerosal-containing vaccines. Hook up home air and water filtration systems, and check your products,” he advises. Visit www.fda.gov/cder/fdama/mercury300.htm for an updated list of mercury-containing drugs and products.

There is also legislation in the works to curb mercury emissions. “Senators Lisa Murkowski from Alaska and Barack Obama have sponsored a piece of legislation called the Mercury Minimization Act, calling for a ban on elemental mercury exports by 2011,” Mandelbaum says. “They recognize that mercury contamination has really detrimental effects on health and will cost societies a lot more than preventive measures.”

Says Woeller, “We have a metal that significantly impacts the nervous system, so it not only affects one’s ability to focus, but it can impact a person’s ability to communicate, to function, and it can cause violent behavior. Just the financial aspects alone to take care of autistic kids, especially in the school system and from a pubic health perspective—it has a huge impact socially and financially.”

He says about 60 percent of the autistic children he sees develop normally until about 15 to 18 months, at which point they regress into autism. He believes that a series of vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, pushes them over the edge: “My suspicion is that the mother had a toxic mercury load that has filtered to the child, and the mercury-containing vaccine was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Many countries around the world—Denmark, Japan, Austria and Great Britain, to name a few—banned thimerosal some 20 years ago.

According to a 2004 report released by the Environmental Working Group, a dramatic nationwide increase in autism followed the Center for Disease Control’s 1988 additions to the nation’s infant recommended vaccination program. Rates rose from six in 10,000 children in the ’80s to nearly one in 150 today. In 2003, the Autism Society of America estimated the cost of caring for 1.5 million autistic children at $90 billion per year.

The FDA has finally acknowledged that thimerosal has the potential for neurotoxicity, even at low levels, and it has recently been reduced or eliminated in vaccines for children aged six and younger (with the exception of the flu vaccine). A 2001 FDA-published report issued by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that evidence was “inadequate to either accept or reject a causal relationship between thimerosal exposure from childhood vaccines and the neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and speech or language delay.” In 2004, the FDA and the IOM later rescinded this statement in a follow-up report, stating that thimerosal-containing vaccines were, in fact, associated with autism. On June 11, hearings began in Federal Claims court to determine if thimerosal is responsible for triggering autism. Over 4,800 families have filed claims against the US government, alleging that their children’s autism resulted from childhood vaccinations. It’s unlikely that a decision will be reached this year.

Woeller tells parents of autistic children to use caution with vaccinations. “I can’t tell someone to vaccinate or not to vaccinate,” he says. “But I would be very cautious with any child who’s on the autistic spectrum from having further vaccines. We just don’t know what vaccine could trigger what, and there’s more than mercury in these shots; they contain aluminum and other heavy metals. Of the kids I test for heavy metals, over 90 percent show an elevated heavy metal load.”

A study by the Environmental Working Group tested commonly eaten canned foods from grocery stores in three US cities, including Oakland. Out of 97 cans, 57 percent contained detectable and often high levels of BPA. Pastas, soups, and infant formula accounted for some of the highest levels. The group estimates that BPA exposure is unsafe in 10 percent of all canned food and a staggering one-third of infant formula.

First synthesized in 1891, bisphenol A is an artificial estrogen that is particularly useful in creating plastic polymers. It is used in a wide variety of products manufactured around the globe, including CDs, fax paper, car parts, adhesives, and bullet-proof laminates. It creates hard plastics, like #7 water and baby bottles, and is also used in epoxy can liners to reduce spoilage of the food inside. BPA has been detected in rivers, soil, and household dust—and is turning up increasingly in studies of human chemical loads. One study found BPA in 95 percent of 400 American adults. It has also been detected in the amniotic fluid surrounding human babies.

For many years now, exposure to BPA has been associated with cancer, insulin resistance, and birth defects. Tests beginning in the ’30s showed that high doses are toxic to rodents. In 1997, it was discovered that low levels of BPA produced harmful effects in male mice exposed in the womb, enlarging the prostate and lowering sperm count. What was most unexpected—and alarming—was that low-dose experiments produced worse effects in the mice than high-dose. Since then, nearly a hundred studies have shown BPA to be toxic in low doses on animals, producing such effects as insulin resistance, damaged DNA, miscarriage, decreased testosterone levels, early puberty, and the production of breast cancer and prostate cancer precursor cells.

Other tests suggest that some people, due to specific genetic makeup, may have a harder time ridding BPA from their bodies, which could make them more susceptible to BPA’s toxic effects. These effects are most dangerous to pregnant women, babies, and young children. For example, in one Japanese study, women who had frequent miscarriages were found to have higher levels of BPA in their bloodstream than women who could carry pregnancies to term. In general, the hormone-unbalancing effects of BPA are not diagnosable as BPA exposure; rather, they may show up as early onset of puberty, reduced fertility, type II diabetes, and an increased risk of cancer. The rise of cancer rates over the last few decades is correlated with the increased use of BPA in industry, although cause and effect is difficult to prove since BPA joins a long list of possible culprits.

While California legislators are at least wrestling with the issue, the Feds last reviewed BPA exposure in food in 1993, when the FDA tested some canned baby formulas and a few other canned foods. It estimated the level of BPA exposure in babies and adults and declared these levels safe, according to the high doses assumed to cause harm at the time. Then the low-dose studies started coming out in the late 1990s. In 1999, the FDA’s George Pauli wrote in the Endocrine/Estrogen Letter that the FDA was unimpressed with these studies. In 2005, George Pauli sent a letter to a concerned California legislator saying there was “no reason [for the FDA] to change its long-held position that current [BPA] uses with food are safe.” Therefore, the FDA does not measure or regulate the amount of BPA in food containers.

To decrease my family’s own chemical load, I purchase organic foods, avoid plastics, buy wooden toys for my son, and use a fabric shower curtain rather than vinyl. But as a busy mom, I often resorted to easy recipes, many of which use canned foods.

After learning about the working group’s study, I contacted nine companies that manufacture the canned foods my family uses. Only one, Trader Joe’s, does not use epoxy liners containing BPA in its cans. All the others, including four makers of organic canned foods, said their can liners contain BPA. I was shocked to learn that the organic foods I was serving my family to keep toxins and pesticides out of our bodies contain BPA! A few of these companies sent me long explanations of why they use BPA in their linings, falling back on FDA guidelines as an indicator of BPA safety. Three claimed that there are no safe alternatives to using BPA liners to protect the canned food from spoiling.

“Not true,” says Jovana Ruzicic of the testing group. “There are alternatives.” I contacted eight companies—General Mills (including Muir Glen organics), B&G Foods, Campbell’s, Amy’s Kitchen, Natural Value, Early California Foods, Acirca (Walnut Acres organics), and Whole Foods 365 (including the company’s organics)—to tell them I am no longer purchasing their products.

What can you do? Let’s lobby the FDA to ban the use of bisphenol A in any food container, including metal can liners. At the very least, food containers containing BPA should be labeled as such. And support bills in the state legislature, such as California Assembly Bill 1108, that would ban bisphenol A and phthalates from toys and baby bottles. Ruzicic suggests that we push on the federal level for the reintroduction of the Kids Safe Chemical Act to protect children from BPA exposure from many sources.

And take the plunge: ask the manufacturers of the canned foods you eat if they use bisphenol A in their can liners. It’s easy: their phone numbers and web page addresses are on the labels.

Here are a few other tips from Ruzicic:

• Choose fresh foods over canned.
• Do not use canned infant formula—or at least contact the manufacturer to see if bisphenol A is in the can liners.
• Avoid using #7 plastics and never microwave plastic containers or put them in the dishwasher. Throw out old, scratched plastic bottles and containers. Elephant Pharmacy carries a line of plastic baby bottles, Born Free, that do not contain BPA.
• Use stainless steel drinking bottles that do not have plastic liners, like those made by Real Wear and Kleen Kanteen.

In the meantime, I am learning how to make refried beans from scratch!

For the full report from the Environmental Working Group, go to ewg.org/reports/bisphenola/execsumm.php. A longer list of ways to avoid bisphenol A is at ewg.org/reports/bisphenola/consumertips.php. For a comprehensive report on bisphenol A (its uses, history and toxic effects) by the World Wildlife Federation, see: assets.panda.org/downloads/bisphenol.pdf.

As I chat with artist Judith Selby Lang’s husband Richard Lang, also an artist, a man walks by, glances at the work, does a doubletake, and halts, his eyes wide.

“Oh, non-art gallery crowd,” says Richard, clearly delighted. The man is precisely the sort of person the Langs hope to reach with their art.

“Is that a car engine?” the man asks Richard, gesturing to one of the “rocks.”

“Nope, plastic!” says Richard, a bit gleefully.

“Plastic!” The man can’t believe it. “All of it? What about that?” He gestures at an oblong shape stuck to the side of one of the islands.

“That’s part of a milk crate,” Richard says. Other shapes are more recognizable, and the man starts to pick them out: a flip-flop, a comb, a vacuum nozzle, an oil container. Then he notices that the orderly white rows of “sand” consist of more than 6,000 white plastic bags, timely given San Francisco’s March 2007 ban on the ubiquitous objects, 180 million of which are distributed in the city every year.

“Did you paint all this stuff?” the man asks, gesturing to the black rocks.

“No, this is black plastic,” answers Richard. He explains that he and his wife need only walk into their barn to find black or any other color plastic; the barn contains thousands of pounds of plastic sorted by color, collected from Marin’s Kehoe Beach near their home.

The man shakes his head and tells tales of trash he’s seen on beaches, and how different it was around here when he was a boy. It couldn’t get any better: The Langs hope their art will make people think about human impacts on the environment and what happens to our garbage after we’ve thrown it away.

This piece is Judith’s brainchild, but another piece they created together, called “Lunch,” displayed a rainbow of milk containers, a toothbrush, a flip-flop, plastic cutlery, bottlecaps, shotgun wadding, prescription bottles—the flotsam and jetsam of our daily lives—dancing its colorful way down a 70-foot-long cord strung along a bright, windowed corridor. The Langs picked up all the material during a 90-minute stroll at Crissy Field.

The Langs’ art projects draw attention to an alarming problem: Plastic never biodegrades. And, says Captain Charles Moore, founder of Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), as much as 2.5 percent of all plastic ever manufactured is now floating around in the world’s oceans. He estimates the debris at 100 million tons, which could double in less than half the time it took to reach that level. He bases this calculation on the exponential increase in plastic usage, which he calls “the lubricant of globalization,” and points out there is no recycling infrastructure in most of the world.

“It’s probably the clearest evidence we have in everyday life of the wastefulness of our culture,” says Richard. “We think we can dump it in the ocean and it disappears. But there’s so much of it now that it’s not disappearing. Nor did it ever.”

While there’s plastic throughout the world’s oceans, gyres—where high-pressure zones swirl currents together “like a toilet that never flushes,” according to Moore—are dense collection points. Scientists now give gyres nicknames like “Eastern Garbage Patch.” Moore has led several research trips to the world’s largest, the Great North Pacific Central Gyre, an Africa-sized gyre that spans 10 million square miles. Other gyres include the South Pacific Gyre, the Sargasso Sea, the South Atlantic Gyre, and the Indian Ocean Gyre.

Moore says, “I believe the so-called Eastern Garbage Patch has united with the Western Garbage Patch off Japan and now the entire north Pacific from 20 degrees to 40 degrees latitude and 135 W to 130 E is a plastic soup where plastic fragments outweigh plankton. This was brought home to me during my voyage last November aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza that sampled an area near Hawaii. I had found that area nearly plastic-free in 2000. Now it has three times as much plastic as plankton.”

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who’s spent 40 years studying plastic in oceans and who publishes the newsletter Beachcombers Alert, explains, “Plastic does not biodegrade. After a while, it becomes pieces that can’t be caught in Charlie Moore’s nets. His nets have a mesh the size of plankton&. But it’s still there. It gets into the food chain. Charlie has found places in the Pacific where there’s six times more plastic than plankton. That’s pretty horrific.”

Because the gyres were traditionally rich in zooplankton and other food, wildlife visit them to feed. But this allure now makes them dangerous. Hannah Nevins, beachcomber coordinator with Moss Landing Marine Laboratories at the California State Universities, has found many dead fulmars, pelagic seabirds, their stomachs stuffed with plastic. Scientists don’t know whether pollutants leached from the plastic are poisoning the birds or whether the plastic’s physical obstruction of the gastro-intestinal tract leads to starvation. Moore says that Laysan albatross chicks also die in large numbers from eating too much plastic.

Ebbesmeyer says, “A single albatross can eat 300 to 400 bottletops. Because they like to glide, they swoop down near the surface and scoop up anything that floats, which is a lot of plastic that can’t be regurgitated. Within the cluster of bones from albatross skeletons are hundreds of pieces of plastic.”

There’s little doubt of plastic’s toxicity. “There’s a whole bunch of chemicals in plastics that mimic estrogen,” says Ebbesmeyer. “& PCBs, DDE, and DDT&so if a male mammal ingests them, you’re altering the balance between testosterone and estrogen&. You wind up with populations worldwide where the males are becoming less male.” In Deborah Cadbury’s book Altering Eden, she suggests that these chemicals are significantly lowering the human male’s sperm count.

Marine debris has adversely affected at least 267 species worldwide, including 86 percent of sea turtle species, 44 percent of sea bird species, and 43 percent of marine mammal species, primarily through ingestion, starvation, suffocation, and entanglement, according to D.W. Laist in Marine Debris—Sources, Impacts, and Solutions.

The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 6.4 million tons of litter enter the world’s oceans each year. Globally, plastic accounts for 60 to 95 percent of that waste, according to J.G.B. Derraik’s 2002 report in the Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Moore says this is because much of our garbage does not make it to landfills or recycling facilities as we might intend. “Eighty percent comes from rivers or is windblown from land-based sources,” Moore said. “Twenty percent comes from ships at sea.” According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only 5.5 percent of the plastic consumed in the US in 2001 was recycled, while the rest ended up in the oceans, landfills, or elsewhere.

Recycling plastics is increasingly difficult because many products are made of composite materials that are hard to recycle. And once plastic waste hits the ocean, cleaning up the mess is impossible. “It’s like trying to put dust back into a bottle. Once it’s out, it’s out,” says Ebbesmeyer. “The only way we have is to control the source.”

To that end, experts are working in a couple of key areas. A three-year study in Southern California conducted by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and funded by the California State Water Resources Control Board counted 2.3 billion plastic items discharged into the ocean during three sample days: two days following rain events and one day after a dry spell. The study examined ways to drastically reduce the amount of municipal waste flowing down rivers into the ocean.

One solution is to change plastic’s components. Steve Mojo, executive director of Biodegradable Products Institute, says in three to five years, “plastics will serve as a food source for animals and microorganisms in the marine environment and will biodegrade safely, much like natural materials.”

But these products are planned for use on ships; they’ll break down in cold, wet environments. They will differ in composition from compostable plastics already on the market, which decompose in warm, damp environments such as compost heaps. Unfortunately, compostable plastics intended for municipal compost bins don’t break down in the way they’re designed to when they end up in the cold ocean.

Of course, plastic will become more costly to produce as oil prices continue to rise; Mojo says industry will increasingly use feedstocks from renewable sources. But for now, Moore says, “A ‘plastic curtain’ of ignorance exists about plastics’ chemical constituents and environmental impacts.”

It’s that curtain the Langs hope to lift with their art. “Beauty and making interesting things to look at is an effective way to create an environmental message,” says Judith. “Instead of pounding people over the head, by creating something that’s curious, we’re actually inviting people to join us on the adventure.”

The flurry of media attention given this winter’s bee losses, now labeled “colony collapse disorder,” has updated the world of bees for a heretofore-clueless public. Our image of honeybees is a lot like our bucolic images of farm animals—and just as far from the brutal truth of today’s corporate agriculture. We picture fields of clover, blossoming orchards, the wildflowers beneath the trees, filled with happy bees industriously gathering nectar and pollen to take back to the hive. As the bees gather pollen, they transfer it from plant to plant, thus assuring cross-pollination.

Fewer people can picture what happens at the hive, where the bees feed the protein-rich pollen to their developing brood. The adults live on honey they make from collected nectar—sipped from the throats of flowers into the bees’ honey stomachs, disgorged at the hive into the hexagonal wax combs made by the bees, fanned by bee wings to evaporate excess moisture until it reaches the perfect syrupy consistency, and then sealed with a wax cap to keep it clean and ready to sustain the colony over the winter. In order to do all this, bees rely on a diverse range of flowers blooming over a wide stretch of the year.

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) is a European native, one of very few bee species in the world to store honey in bulk and live fulltime in large colonies (30,000 to 100,000 individuals). It is the only bee with a long history of intensive management by people. For almost all of this time, and continuing today in many parts of the world, the rosy picture of bee life painted above is largely accurate. But when beekeeping meets industrial agriculture, the result is very different. Colony collapse disorder may have many contributing causes, but it comes down to bees hitting the biological limits of our agricultural system. It’s not so much a bee crisis as a pollination crisis. And we may end up calling it agricultural collapse disorder.

It’s a rare beekeeper in the United States who can survive by selling honey. The trade loophole that has flooded this country with low-cost Chinese honey for the past ten years guaranteed that (fortunately for beekeepers, that hole has just been plugged by new federal tariff regulations). The only income remaining has been in pollination services. Alan Wilson’s bees are rented out for almond pollination starting in February. After that they go south to the orange groves, then all the way to North Dakota where they make clover honey. Wilson’s Central Valley location near Merced has little to offer bees over the dry summer months except roadside star thistle and the brief flowering of cantaloupes in August. Nearby agricultural chemicals are a concern, especially the defoliant used on cotton before harvest. Just the drift from the defoliant has taken the paint off Wilson’s hives. Still, this year he plans to keep his bees closer to home where he can manage them more intensively and try to increase their numbers.

Every commercial beekeeper has different arrange-ments, but each involves long-distance trucking and the California almond crop. Almonds are entirely dependent on the seasonal importation of honeybees. Growers can’t get crop insurance coverage unless they have at least two bee colonies per acre at almond blossom time; some growers use up to five colonies per acre for heavier yields. Over 800,000 Central Valley acres are planted in almond trees. As beekeeper Randy Oliver says, it is “monoculture at its absolute worst—they don’t allow one species of weed to grow”: mile after mile of bare soil and almond trees. No native pollinators can survive on this wasted landscape to ease the honeybees’ burden, and nothing lives to sustain bees before or after the almond bloom.

Truckloads of bees begin to arrive as early as November from all over the nation—it takes virtually all of this country’s commercially operated pollination colonies to cover California’s almonds. While the bees roll down the highways, hive entrances boarded up, or wait in Central Valley bee yards for the trees to bloom, they’re fed a mixture of high fructose corn syrup meant to replace nectar, along with soy protein meant to replace pollen. (Some beekeepers, Wilson among them, have switched to beet syrup as a safer though more expensive alternative.) Oliver sums up the patent absurdity: “When bugs from the east coast have to be trucked to California to pollinate an exotic tree because California has no bugs, it’s a pretty whacked-out agricultural system.”

Oliver’s 500 bee colonies—he was lucky, with losses under ten percent—follow a relatively short migratory truck route that takes them from Central Valley almonds to Sierra foothill wildflowers to Nevada alfalfa. He attributes his success to fewer and shorter moves, reliance on pasture forage for much of the year, and avoidance of artificial feeding. “Some of these guys move their bees a dozen times a year,” he says. Popular pollination routes include apples and blueberries, which rely on honeybees for 90 percent of their pollination, peaches (50 percent), and oranges (30 percent). Farmers won’t bother planting squash or melons if they can’t get beehives in place by bloom time. One-third of all US crops depend on honeybee pollination.

It hasn’t been this way for long. Even 30 years ago growers could rely on a combination of native pollinating insects and local honeybees for most crops. In 1970, there were 35 beekeepers in Alan Wilson’s area; now there are two. As farms grew more and more of fewer and fewer crops, using petrochemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, vast tracts of land have gradually approached the reductionist goal of supporting no life at all except the target crop. It’s not just the almonds—every crop is grown this way. That’s why it’s called industrial agriculture, or factory farming.

Bee researchers have been calling bees “the canary in this coal mine,” a different version of the birds and the bees. A quote attributed to Albert Einstein has been popping up all over the Internet: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” Einstein never said it, but the instant ubiquity of the sentiment says everything.

Though the media only picked it up this year, bees have actually been in trouble for the past couple of decades. Mites—parasitic insects small enough to use bees as their hosts—jumped from other species to honeybees, another example of collateral damage from global transportation. First tracheal mites in the ’80s, then varroa mites in the ’90s—even before last winter, the world’s honeybee population had declined by half in 30 years.

UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen points out that before the mites arrived, winter losses of five to ten percent of a beekeeper’s colonies were the norm. The mites increased yearly losses to 25 percent by the late ’80s, and now we’re at 40 percent or higher, with some years better than average and others catastrophic. Randy Oliver says, “If we made a list of collapses of the last 20 years, this winter’s would not make the top five.” Last year’s losses were bad for Alan Wilson, but the last four years together have decimated his colonies by over 90 percent. The only beekeepers doing substantially better are the very small percentage practicing non-chemical mite control coupled with little or no trucking or artificial feeding—in other words, labor-intensive vigilance combined with lower pollination income. It’s not a financially viable option for many fulltime beekeepers.

The difference with this winter’s losses is not having an identified cause, and therefore no quick (even if temporary) fix. For tracheal mites, beekeepers developed nontoxic preventive treatments—Alan Wilson successfully doses his bees on a mixture of Crisco, sugar, and peppermint extract. Varroa mites proved trickier, and beekeepers started down the slippery slope of synthetic insecticide use. “Until the mid-’90s nobody dreamed of using chemicals in beehives,” Oliver says. Once they did, the race was on, with insecticide-resistant varroa mites evolving neck-in-neck with the newest chemical treatment. European beekeepers, who have had the varroa mite longer, have pretty much given up on chemicals and use an Integrated Pest Management approach. US beekeepers who go this route find it labor- and attention-intensive, and effective within its parameters (not eradication but healthy bees living with a smaller number of mites). According to Oliver, “We’re just prolonging our agony as long as we continue to use chemical treatments.”

Everyone agrees the honeybee buzzed into the 21st century carrying a heavy load of stress. Colonies were weakened by mites, perhaps by chemicals used to kill the mites, and probably by at least some of the 25 different viruses carried by varroa mites. Add in a fungus, nosema, that’s tolerated by healthy bees but a problem for already weakened hives. Then there’s the stress of long-distance truck travel, longer distances for more bees every year. The small hive beetle, an African native recently found in Florida hives, posed another challenge; aggressive African honeybees attack the beetle, but European bees, bred to be docile, let it overrun the hive.

Cell phone interference has been proposed as a threat to bees, based on reports of a German study showing bees unable to find their way home in the presence of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. This particular theory must be called inconclusive at best, since the study was not designed with enough apicultural knowledge to produce reliable results.

No bee taken from the hive for the first time, as was done in the study, would be able to find its way back, since bees navigate primarily by landmarks, not electromagnetic homing sensors. Their first few excursions are short orientation flights, not blind trips in a box to a release point.

Of all these factors, many beekeepers judge varroa mites the most consistently debilitating. But there’s another weakening influence more obvious and more integral to the larger agricultural dilemma. It’s the stressor Mussen calls the most important of all—bee malnutrition. High-fructose corn syrup and soy protein are not any more nutritious for bees than they are for humans (see Spring 2007), and bees in transit and between pollination jobs often must subsist on nothing but these non-foods. Compounding the problem, we’re talking genetically modified corn and soy, every cell of which contains a bacterial insecticide. Are bees not insects? US studies have indicated that Bt corn pollen does not kill healthy bees or brood reared on it, but a German study showed that Bt pollen led to “significantly stronger decline in the number of bees” in hives already weakened by varroa mites.

We do know that corn pollen in general is poor bee food, high in fiber and low in protein. The Midwest, up until now the country’s best bee forage habitat, this year is being planted much more aggressively to GM corn as a source for ethanol—aggressive meaning planting marginal areas and edges usually left to the asters and goldenrods that are high-quality pollen sources in late summer when bees need to raise the generation that will overwinter. Even when bees are out foraging for real nectar and non-GMO pollen, for much of the year they are likely to be ingesting a monocultured diet due to their use as pollinators for industrial-scale agriculture—nothing but almond, then nothing but apple, then only watermelon. They’re exposed to pesticides used on their forage crops as well. Oh—and one more influence to factor into the equation—very hot weather can damage the protein content of pollen, decreasing its food value for bees. Global warming is kicking our butts from more directions than we can comprehend.

Given these conditions, last winter’s losses can hardly be considered a surprise. Neither can the failure of bee researchers to come up with one specific cause, much less a magic bullet cure. Still, the kind of thinking that got us this far continues. According to Mussen, “the only hope is the USDA Tucson lab” which is working on a liquid feed that bees can eat all year. Randy Oliver calls this the “holy grail” of bee research. The USDA’s proprietary formula, if they come up with one that works, will be patented and licensed to a commercial producer, and the whole agricultural system may manage to lurch along for a few more years, complete with pollinators hauled from Florida to California in time for the almond bloom.

How did all those almonds get pollinated this year, on the heels of beekeepers’ discoveries that half (in some cases up to 90 percent) of their colonies had suddenly gone missing? It wouldn’t have happened without a change in regulations that allowed bees to be imported from Australia. Bee businesses Down Under went into boom mode, sending 100,000 packages of bees to the States. A package is a starter kit of about 10,000 worker bees and a queen, enclosed in a small screened box with a sugar water feeder. The receiving beekeeper shakes the package into a waiting hive, and given proper nectar and pollen resources, within a month a new generation of bees will be expanding the colony.

The Australian influx may be short-lived, as a colony of Indian bees (Apis cerana) was recently discovered living aboard a yacht off Australia. The Indian bee is host to yet another mite that could wreak havoc if it spreads to the European honeybee. Another factor in almond pollination this year was the rental price for a bee colony, which averaged $150, nearly twice what it was last year. This was the first year in which the income beekeepers realized from almond pollination surpassed the income received for the entire US honey crop. There’s talk of opening the Canadian border for next year’s almond season.

To paraphrase Randy Oliver, we’re prolonging our agony by continuing with this profoundly unworkable agricultural system. Suddenly terms like “organic” and “biodiversity” shift from boutique buzzwords to elements of survival. This country has 4,500 species of native insects that are potential pollinators. On the East Coast, where farms are much smaller, more diverse, and broken up by uncultivated land, native insects account for up to 90 percent of crop pollination. Studies done on Costa Rican coffee crops have shown that yields are 20 percent greater within one kilometer of forest remnants. Canadian canola farmers show increased yields by leaving 30 percent of their cropland wild. It’s all about pollination.

Fortunately for us, insects are quick to recolonize formerly dead areas. Hedgerows, windbreaks, wetlands, woodlots—the particulars of restoration agriculture are easy and already known. It’s the big picture that’s harder to shift, from the extractive industrial petrochemical model to the biodiverse ecosystem model. Honeybees have upped the ante, giving us all the motivation we need to change—do we want to continue to eat?

The organic movement began in the 1940s as a backlash against the growth of industrialized agriculture and the accompanying spread of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Sir Albert Howard, called the father of organics, created the philosophical foundation for the burgeoning movement in his 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament. Howard advocated natural pest control and fertilization, including using animal manures, compost, and mulches, methods used successfully for thousands of years. But most farmers subscribed to the higher yield promise of better-living-through-chemistry, and organics remained a fringe movement until the ’60s, when Rachel Carson and others exposed the ecological and biological dangers of pesticide use.

The organic movement gained an increasing number of followers in the ’80s as consumers began to understand the health risks of pesticides. Finally in 1990, amidst calls for standardization and regulation of the growing organic market, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act. The act divided organics into three categories: 100 percent organic; organic, with 95 percent organic content; and made with organic ingredients, with at least 70 percent organic content.

Organic food contains “little or no chemicals, synthetics, irradiation, genetically modified organisms, or sewage sludge.” Farmers, processors, and distributors have to certify their operations through an accredited agent before using the “organic” label. Since 1997, organic food sales have grown annually by 15 to 21 percent, by far the fastest rate in the food economy. Recent reports of the potential health and ecological benefits of organic food continue to stimulate this growth. Several studies, the most recent by professors at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, have shown that organic foods have higher content of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

Organics may even provide protection from pesticides in the body. A report published last year in Environmental Health Perspectives concluded that the frequency of detection of two pesticides, malathion and chlorpyrifos, “varied significantly between conventional and organic diet phases,” and that after only a five-day organic diet, these chemicals were no longer detectable in urine.

A recent study of apple orchards in Washington, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, a staple of conventional agriculture, is the leading cause of global nitrogen pollution and ecological damage. By contrast, “organic fertilizers in orchards significantly reduce harmful nitrate leaching.” The Fourth Assessment Report released earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that global increases in the concentrations of two potent greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, can be attributed to agriculture. Organic farmers employ natural farming techniques such as crop rotation systems, beneficial plants and insects, and soil covers.

Don’t Depend on the Feds

Organic agriculture is more labor-intensive than conventional agriculture, because it does not benefit from efficiencies gained by controlled, homogeneous crops and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers who have transitioned to organic agriculture often report lower initial crop yields and high rates of second grade or unmarketable products. These factors contribute to the higher prices of organics, usually a 20 to 30 percent premium over conventional equivalents. The higher price of organics is also affected by government subsidies to crops that fuel the conventional agriculture economy, especially corn, wheat, and soy.

The federal government provides limited funding for organic agriculture through research and cost-share programs. Cost-share programs are minor, compensating the farmer for up to $500. The budget allocation—and the program is limited to 15 states with “historically low participation in the crop insurance program”—only totals $1 million dollars annually. The 2002 Farm Bill appropriated another $5 million for cost-share programs in all states. According to Thomas Beswick, horticulture program leader for the USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, the total invested in research directly related to organic agriculture in 2004 amounted to $11.5 million.

“The bottom line is that historically there has not been much investment in organic agriculture,” says Beswick. This January, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns announced the administration’s recommendations for a $10 million increase for organic agriculture research in the 2007 Farm Bill. “That may not be as much as for other initiatives, but it is the first time the administration has recommended anything for organics,” says Beswick. To put the Farm Bill in perspective, out of a total proposed $618 billion allocated over five years, the administration is budgeting $61 million over 10 years to all organic program initiatives, including cost-share programs, research, and data collection and publication (see page 11).

Enter Wal-Mart

So the government is not fond of organics, but no retailer can ignore a double-digit annual growth rate. In 2005, organic food sales grew by 16.2 percent to total $13.8 billion, according to a survey by the Organic Trade Association. Mass-market channels such as supermarkets, club stores, and mass merchandisers are seizing an increasingly larger portion of this market. According to the survey, these venues accounted for 46 percent of the organic food dollar, while independent natural food stores and other sources such as farmers’ markets represent less than 25 percent.

Last summer, Wal-Mart announced an expansion of its organic options. Chief marketing officer John Fleming pledged the retailer would sell organic products at just 10 percent more than their conventional equivalents; this, he said, was the “democratization” of organics.

One might call it the globalization of organics instead. Wal-Mart must inevitably turn to foreign producers, like China and Brazil, to meet its quantity and cost demands. According to a USDA report, imports of organics are already valued at $1.0 to $1.5 billion: “The US was at one time a net exporter of organic food, but as a result of strong domestic growth over the last 10 to 15 years, it is estimated that the value of US imports now exceeds exports by a ratio of approximately eight to one.” Is all of that imported organic food organic by US standards? There is not one USDA certifying agent in all of China and only one in Brazil.

From farm to plate our food travels approximately 1,500 miles, using 10 calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of energy we get as food. In fact, 20 percent of our total fuel consumption is expended on food shipments. “The reason consumers feel so good about paying higher prices for organics is because they think they are supporting a different environmental standard,” says Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group. “Burning fossil fuels to ship frozen vegetables from China is not environmentally sound and not organic.”

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s management of its organic products is already under review. Last year, Kastel notified the retailer that several of its non-organic foods, including sugar, yogurt, and produce, were mislabeled as organic. After Wal-Mart failed to correct the labels, Kastel filed complaints with both the USDA and the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture.

Dairy Dilemma

Wal-Mart is the biggest seller of organic milk in the country, but its dairy suppliers are large, industrialized operations with questionable standards. Organic Valley, the largest organic farmer cooperative in North America, initially supplied organic milk to Wal-Mart. When Wal-Mart continued to push for lower prices during a milk shortage two years ago, Organic Valley canceled its contract with the retailer. Horizon and Aurora dairies replaced Organic Valley.

Horizon is the largest organic dairy in the nation, with 55 percent of the market. In a not-so-pleasing symmetry, Horizon is owned by Dean Foods, Inc., the largest conventional milk producer in the nation. Dean Foods also owns 41 other brands, such as the Organic Cow of Vermont, Garelick Farms, Brown’s Dairy, and WhiteWave/Silk, the soymilk producer. According to Horizon’s web site, its milk comes from two company farms and “family farms.” The bucolic scene of cows grazing on lush green fields is not consistent with reality. Horizon’s dairies have been accused of confining their cows in feedlots and providing limited access to pasture, spurring a boycott by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), PCC Natural Markets in Seattle, and several other co-ops across the country. Feedlot cows are fed a grain diet to increase milk production. Due to lack of fiber, grain-fed cows often develop sub-acute rumen acidosis, resulting in chronic diarrhea and hoof hemorrhages.

Vander Eyk Jr. Dairy, one of the “family farms” that provides milk for Horizon, is a split conventional/organic dairy with 8,000 to 10,000 cows. Kastel’s Cornucopia Institute has filed a complaint against both the Vander Eyk Dairy and Horizon. “These dairies do not afford their animals proper access to pasture,” says Kastel. “This impacts the health and longevity of the animals and affects the competitiveness of other farmers that are farming ethically.”

Unlike Horizon, Aurora produces all of its own milk on two large farms, with 4,000 cows in St. Vrain, Colorado and 3,300 cows in Dublin, Texas. It has plans for a third farm in Kersey, Colorado with 3,200 cows. Aurora accounts for 10 percent of the organic milk market, and it supplies the private labels of several supermarkets, including Wal-Mart’s Great Value, Safeway’s O, Costco’s Kirkland Signature, and others, according to the OCA.

Aurora is also facing allegations of poor feedlot conditions and limited access to pasture for its herds, and it too is part of the OCA milk boycott. The scale of its farms makes it difficult, if not impossible, to allow the cows grazing time, and the farms are located on semi-arid land. According to Kastel, who has filed a USDA complaint against Aurora, the dairy not only fails to provide its herds with adequate access to pasture, but it has also purchased cows from a breeder who is not certified organic. “People buy the story behind the organic label, but that story may not be what they are actually getting,” says Kastel.

Kastel believes the USDA is to blame for the lapse in organic dairy conditions. Historically, the agency has been lenient in its organic regulations, initially allowing the use of genetically modified organisms, sewage sludge, and irradiation, until public outcries demanded their repeal. The USDA’s current standards for organic ruminants only mandate “access to pasture,” without specifying what “access” entails. The USDA is supposed to vote on new grazing standards by the end of this year, but Kastel believes the agency is delaying enacting stricter regulations. “The National Organic Standards Board has considered new grazing standards since 2005, with five different proposals,” he says. “USDA bureaucrats have become complacent to the agribusiness representatives.”

Better Living Through Upscaling

Last September’s E.coli outbreak startled health-savvy consumers with its revelations of the consolidation of large-scale organic farms. The final report about the outbreak, published by the USDA and the California Department of Health Services, concluded that the contaminated spinach was packaged in a San Juan Bautista plant by Natural Selection Foods (NSF). NSF is a packager and distributor of organic and non-organic produce. The company supplies spinach to 34 different brand names including Trader Joe’s, Green Harvest, Nature’s Basket, Ready Bac, Emeril, and national distributor Sysco. NSF is also known as Earthbound Farms, the largest organic produce company in the US.

Founded in 1984 by Drew and Myra Goodman in Carmel Valley, Earthbound Farms began as a 2.5-acre farm selling organic raspberries. Within a decade the company’s trademark prepackaged salad mixes were regularly sold at large retailers. In 1995, after merging with Mission Ranches, an established conventional grower in California, Earthbound became Natural Selection Foods, though the Earthbound name remained. In 1999, Tanimura & Antle’s, the largest independent grower of conventional lettuce, became a third partner. Organic produce for the Earthbound brand is grown on 30,000 acres in four states and in Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, and Chile. The only difference between Earthbound and conventional mega brands is that no pesticides are used in its production.

Meanwhile, few of the original organic brands remain independent. Coca-Cola bought Odwalla, famous for its organic beverages, for $181 million in 2001. Kraft owns Boca Foods, maker of meatless burgers and sausages, as well as Back to Nature, a maker of organic cereals, snacks and dinners. Kellogg’s has scooped up two organic cereal brands, Kashi and Morning Star/Natural Touch. General Mills owns Muir Glen, maker of organic tomato products like sauces and purees, and Cascadian Farms, best known for its cereals. Cascadian Farms is another good example of organics buyouts: originally a small, organic farm in Washington State in the ’70s, it became a part of Small Planet Foods in 1998, which was bought by General Mills in 2000.

Despite the acquisitions, the above-named brands have no links on their packaging to their corporate owners. Their web sites, with the exception of Cascadian, don’t mention who owns them; their sites tell stories of tough beginnings and organic idealism.

Several billion-dollar companies and large retailers also produce organic versions of their own products. Con Agra, the second largest food company in the nation (behind Altria) now makes PAM Organic, Hunt’s Organic Canned Tomatoes, and Orville Redenbacher’s Organic Microwave Popcorn. Kraft offers Organic Macaroni & Cheese, Organic Honey Bunches of Oats, Organic Zesty Italian Dressing, and Organic Planter’s Cashews. Safeway created its own O organic brand, with 150 products. Costco sells its brand of organics as Kirkland Signature.

Corporations and retailers entering the organic market pledge a wider choice of cheaper products. And indeed, less expensive organic food offers healthier choices to a larger population. Putting more land into organic production decreases the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers as well as genetically engineered and irradiated ingredients. Importing organic produce may aid overseas farmers, who receive higher wages and avoid exposure to synthetic pesticides.

Despite early concerns, Wal-Mart’s greatest contribution to organics may be its impact on public perceptions of the movement itself. Organic consumers are already responding to the industrialized expansion of organics. An April article in Business Week, “Wal-Mart and Organics: Big Promises, Little Delivery,” revealed that the retailer may be scaling back its organic expansion. The writer surmised that lower prices are not sufficient to lure organic consumers to Wal-Mart, and the retailer’s core customer base may be unwilling to pay more for organics.

Money Talks

Public concern over the environmental impact of organic imports and industrialized organic farms may be behind Whole Foods’ recent push to increase its stock of local products. According to Justin Jackson, the North California/Pacific Northwest grocery coordinator for Whole Foods, “locally grown products come from farms with 200 acres or less, with some exceptions.” The products also cannot travel for more than seven hours from farm to the Whole Foods facility. “Customers may feel it is disingenuous to call anything else local,” says Jackson. Jackson says the chain has traditionally supported local growers. “We are trying even harder now to get back to our roots, before we became more centralized,” he says. The retailer also recently committed to exclusively sourcing its 365 brand organic and conventional milk from family farms.

In the winter local produce accounts for 30-35 percent of the stores’ stock, but in the summer it rises close to 60 percent.ÊWhole Foods imports 25 percent of its produce in the winter, and 10 to 15 percent in the summer, according to Jackson. The retailer’s efforts to localize are impacted by customers: Chilean grapes and Mexican avocados crowd the shelves because customers want them. “Are we not going to carry organic blueberries in the winter just because we can’t get them locally?” asks Jackson.

Once processed foods and consolidated farms came into the equation, the organic designation lost some meaning. The growth of farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs nationwide is an indication that people want more connection with their food. There are approximately 1,500 CSAs and 4,385 farmers’ markets in the US, up from 1,755 farmers’ markets in 1994. In some areas, neighbors are forming groups to buy direct from nearby farmers and ranchers. Bypassing industrial agriculture takes energy and commitment, and consumers have more power than they often realize. Money dictates the direction of food production—and the consumer casts a vote with every dollar.

We used to think that we should get that water out of sight as quickly as possible; rather than flooding streets, send it off to the bay lickety-split. But now we know that the gunk in that runoff causes problems for everyone, especially fish. Take copper, leaching from worn brake pad linings, roofing materials, algaecides, and fungicides. Copper can cause salmon to lose their sense of smell, so they aren’t as alert to the presence of predators or able to find their natal stream. Some pesticides have the same effect.

So how do we deal with stormwater? Rechanneling it into our aging sewer systems is not an option. The problem only gets worse as we add impervious surfaces with parking lots and new housing. A recent visit to Seattle convinced me that there is a better way.

Using a revolutionary series of “natural drainage systems,” Seattle is attempting to detain and slow stormwater by trying to mimic the forest floor and pasture that once covered its landscape. Bit by bit, the city rips out pavement and pipes in suburban and urban neighborhoods, replacing concrete and asphalt with swales, rain gardens, and other soft surfaces.

California is starting to think in this direction: The state and regional water boards, the agencies with jurisdiction over water quality in the state’s streams, rivers, and bay, have begun requiring large new developments to capture most of their runoff on-site with grassy swales and porous pavement. But a lot of urban runoff comes from cities that are already built-out—San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, to name just a few culprits. Although the Bay Area has been a leader in restoring urban streams, when it comes to retrofitting older cities with greener “pipes,” it is far behind the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere in the US and around the world.

Seattle’s first project, called SEA Street (for Street Edge Alternative Street) was put in the ground in 2000 in an older neighborhood northwest of downtown. The city’s transportation and public utilities departments worked with neighbors to replace an old “unimproved” gutter and ditch stormwater system with a series of connected, vegetated swales. The swales resemble the understory of a Pacific Northwest forest. “We’re trying to make an urbanized environment think like it’s still forested,” says Bob Spencer, the city’s Creek Steward. The ground is soft and covered with leaf litter; trees and shrubs glisten in the damp air. Most of the vegetation is native, but some drought-tolerant non-natives are included; neighbors were given a range of choices. Looking at other streets nearby, I can see that SEA Street (aka 2nd Avenue NW between 120th and 119th streets), was previously an “anywhere USA” older suburb. SEA Street now has a vivid sense of place, and songbirds and butterflies flit among the shrubs and trees.

“People who didn’t even know each other before come out of their houses and talk to each other now,” says Spencer. He helps organize occasional “mulch” parties to keep down weeds—the neighbors took over maintenance of the swales after the first three years. Many of them have incorporated the swales into their own gardens so that the swales look like an extension of their own yards—but a little wilder. Another benefit is slower traffic—the curvy, narrower street discourages speeding. Spencer tells me foot traffic has quadrupled. As if to validate his statement, a jogger trots by, followed by a woman pushing a baby carriage and a teenager walking his dog.

Fire trucks gain access via flat, jumpable curbs. The narrower, curved street means that less pavement can be used, says the city’s Jim Johnson. The project cost $850,000 and was funded through the city’s stormwater drainage fees. Most importantly, SEA Street led to several similar projects on a larger scale, and to huge public awareness. I ask Kevin Olson, who lives on the street, his understanding of the swales’ function. “They hold and slow down the stormwater so it doesn’t race into Pipers’ Creek and hurt the salmon,” he replies. Recent studies by the University of Washington confirm Olson: the swales are reducing runoff from two-year storms (storms that occur on average every two years and do the most damage to local creeks) by 99 percent.

Two years following SEA Street, the city ripped out four blocks of a ditch and culvert system a few blocks to the south and replaced it with a series of vegetated pools that stair-step down a fairly steep hill. This project, known as 110th Cascade, drains 21 acres of the Pipers Creek watershed. The next project, Broadview Green Grid, is larger still, draining 32 acres of the Pipers Creek watershed. Encompassing 15 city blocks and completed in 2004 at a cost of $5.1 million funded by drainage fees, it built upon what was learned at SEA Street and 110th Cascade. It incorporates swales on the north-south oriented streets and cascade step pools at the east-west boundary streets. Last October, another similarly sized project—called Pinehurst Green Grid—was put in the ground.

Seattle is also going natural in neighborhoods with straight, wide streets and conventional curbs. The first phase of the largest such project to date has just been completed—redevelopment of High Point, 130 acres of World War II housing south of downtown Seattle. The project—a collaboration among the Seattle Housing Authority, Seattle Public Utilities, and other city agencies—followed the city’s new low impact development guidelines, using porous pavement, disconnected downspouts, rain gardens, and swales; existing large trees were saved. But its most impressive feature is the series of vegetated swales—modeled after SEA Street but straighter since they run along traditional streets—between the sidewalk and street. “The idea here was to fit natural drainage systems into a new urbanist framework,” says landscape architect Peg Staeheli, who designed the swales.

Even downtown, stormwater gets a nod. With help from a one percent art tax, several stormwater treatment “installations” were put in a few years ago. One is a 10-foot-high, 6-foot diameter cistern that takes roof runoff from the downspout and stores rainwater that can later be used for landscape irrigation. Another is a series of “cistern steps,” adjacent to a downtown community garden called P-Patch. A series of terraced water gardens follows a series of pedestrian steps. Rain and runoff flow from one garden to the next (at each retained for awhile) before flowing into a small jade pool at the bottom of the hill. Part of the idea behind this project, says Staeheli, was to reintroduce the concept of the hydrologic cycle to city dwellers.

If our neighbors to the north can get on board with stormwater, why does the Bay Area and most of the rest of the state lag so far behind? We require that sprawling new developments treat their runoff on-site, but older urban areas—most of our cities—seem to have been forgotten. I posed this question to Shin Rae Lee of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Lee says that improving stormwater runoff is a priority for her agency but that it’s hard to make things happen here. “When we first issued our stormwater permit [to cities] to deal with new and redevelopment in 2003, this was such a big issue. We realized we cannot touch existing neighborhoods, just go in and say ‘fix it,’” says Lee. Her agency has tried to be flexible, and when a site is being redeveloped, she says, it will often allow developers to retrofit “the low hanging fruit,” such as install a stormwater swale in a nearby parking lot, for example, instead of on the site being developed. But more often, she says, cities argue against doing anything at all. “The 2003 requirements just became effective,” she adds. “We gave them a schedule for planners to be trained, for contractors and developers to be educated, to slowly bring them on board.” In other words, cities and developers leaned on the board to get a four-year extension.

Lee wishes local city and flood control agencies would realize that if they would use natural biofiltration systems such as swales, they might slow runoff and avoid widening creeks and turning them into ugly flood control channels. Part of the problem, says Lee, is that her agency’s authority over the cities is indirect and limited. The regional board is focusing now on a more stringent creek protection policy that will keep development farther from creek banks, which should lesson impacts. “We do have control over development close to creeks, so we’re trying to tie that to stormwater runoff to protect the creeks,” says Lee.

Another perceived obstacle in California, she points out, is that Prop 218, passed in 1996, required that any increase in stormwater fees be approved by two-thirds of California’s voters. Yet, she adds, several bond measures recently passed here contain money for stormwater projects, and cities, counties, and others can apply under a competitive grants program. “We need to push people to think in a more integrated creative way, to put stormwater into the grants,” says Lee. “If you do a project, it should serve multiple objectives.” Lee hopes that with better public awareness about climate change and sea level rise and the impacts they could have on storms and flows, that more cities, counties, and developers will want to do more about stormwater.

I ask Greg Gearheart, a stormwater engineer with the State Water Resources Control Board (the next level above the nine regional boards) the same question I posed to Lee. Gearheart points out that while California is ahead of other states in restoring streams and rivers, the state—and the regional water boards—may need to push harder to get local agencies to do something about stormwater. “It took a series of enforcement actions to get San Francisco to finally realize that it was in their interest to treat stormwater,” he says. Although San Francisco has not yet implemented many innovative stormwater projects, it employs a full-time staff person who is actively seeking opportunities for pilot projects.

Gearheart says California has been more focused on educating the public about not polluting downstream—stenciling storm drains, for instance, and going after industry polluters—than on looking upstream and trying to intercept and treat stormwater throughout the entire watershed. What’s sad about that is that in many of our urban areas, where creeks are underground, people have no clue about where their stormwater is going. “It means that people don’t get that there was once a natural system before they moved there,” says Gearheart, who thinks visible stormwater treatment projects—like Seattle’s swales and Portland’s rain gardens—educate people who live in cities. “Subtle landscape features are hard to understand in the first place. It’s hard to get to ‘what used to be here?’, but stormwater projects like swales and rain gardens could help with that,” he says. “California gets hung up on the big icons—the salmon in the north; the beaches in Southern California.” But, as Seattle has shown, sometimes little, slow, and green can go a long way.