10 years ago on June 26, 2013 at a regular meeting of the Kauaʻi County Council, Bill 2491 was introduced and passed first reading. Actually, it was anything but a “regular” meeting (IYKYK).
The Story of Bill 2491 – Chapter 1 – It all started in a living room
It all started as a living room conversation with a handful of 20 – 30 year old millennials. I had no idea at the time that this conversation would lead to others, and those conversations would further evolve and grow, culminating in an epic battle between my tiny island home of Kauaʻi Hawaiʻi, and 4 of the largest chemical companies in the world.
Sol Kahn and Fern Holland where the two who initially reached out.
“Uncle Gary, we need your help,” was their message. And, as a family friend and newly elected member of the Kauaʻi County Council, my natural response was of course “I’m not exactly sure what I can do, but put a small group together and let’s meet up soon and talk.”
Needless to say, on November 20, 2012 at 6pm, I met with Sol, Fern and a small group of their friends, perhaps 5 people max. Born and raised Kauaʻi kids to me, but young adults really. A few I knew somewhat, and others I had never met. By day they were surfers, fishermen and scuba divers, and by night they mostly worked in the hospitality industry as wait help, bussing tables, and tending bar – each of them concerned about their community and wanting to do something.
Sol’s parents Carole and Marti Kahn were longtime friends. I remember Marti sending me a note with a link to a documentary film on the issue of GMO’s that Sol had sent him. Marti encouraged me watch the video and talk with Sol.
So I did. Little did I know at the time watching that short film and meeting with that small group would be the catalyst for a major movement.
Their message to me was succinct and direct. “Uncle, we need your help. These GMO companies have taken over our island, they dominate the west side and now are expanding their fields to the south and to the east. Soon they will be crossing the river to the north as well. People are getting sick. We know folks on the west side who are going door-to-door counting the neighbors who have cancer, asthma, and other health problems. Uncle, you have to do something.”
I listened intently to their earnest pleas for help. This small group of young adults, sitting in a softly lit living room tucked away in the hills of Wailua Homesteads. Most were about the same age as my own children. I knew their parents. I’d watched them grow up, play soccer, and hang out together growing up on this beautiful and special island we all called home.
The seeds of responsibility and a deep obligation to not let them down were planted deep inside me that evening. They were counting on me, and I had to come through for them. There really was no other option.
So, like a good politician and also a good uncle, I did my best to manage their expectations without killing their hope.
At the end of the evening discussion, prior to heading home I said to them, “I’m only a Councilman. Even if I thought it was the right thing to do, I do not have the power or legal authority to kick these companies off our island. I could possibly introduce and maybe pass a county ordinance that might make their operations safer or something, but even then I am only 1 of 7 on the council and it will take at least 4 to pass anything. I’m not sure what I can do, but let me look into it and see what’s going on.”
And so it began, an epic battle between the 4 of the largest chemical companies in the world against literally a handful of young people concerned about the health of their community
I don’t use the word epic, lightly.
Kauaʻi County, a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a resident population of only 68,000 people was considered “ground zero” by GMO activists around the world. While we did not know it at the time of these first conversations, we soon discovered that more highly toxic Restricted Use Pesticides (RUP) were being used, and more experimental GMO crops were being grown on our island than anywhere else in the United States.
No local county government had ever successfully challenged this industry in communities where the companies were already established, doing their toxic business and employing hundreds of people.
But we set out that day to do exactly that.
And it all started at 6pm on November 20th, 2012 as a conversation in a Wailua Homesteads living room.
To be absolutely clear, if Sol and Fern hadn’t asked for the meeting, and if the other young people there that night had not taken the time to attend and to speak out – Bill 2491 and the epic battle that followed might never have happened.
But they did, and thus the story of Bill 2491 and “the little island that could” begins.
Two weeks prior, I had won election to the Kauaʻi County Council. During the preceding year, while campaigning around the island, the refrain was constant and uniform, “Gary, we have to do something, this GMO thing is out of control.”
The message during those 8 months of island wide campaigning was consistent and came from all sectors of our community. This was not just my usual hippie, environmentalist, white, north shore friends. Little old ladies would pull me aside in the supermarket to express their concerns. Young parents at the park, Rotary Club friends, conservatives and liberals alike, would send me emails, texts, and leave voice mail messages on my phone – “Gary, we have to do something…”.
Gradually, then not so gradually, as I drove around the island, going door to door, attending events, putting up campaign signs – “the penny dropped”.
The corn was everywhere. The GMO corn, grown by the chemical companies was pervasive, covering what seemed to be every square inch of agricultural land on at least half of the island. There was corn along the highway by the airport, in fields directly across from Kukui Grove Shopping Center, surrounding Kauaʻi Community College and Island School. And that was only in the town of Lihue.
On the Southside the corn was planted near the Maha’ulepu coastline and mile after mile along the highway headed west, everywhere you looked on both sides of the highway was corn.
Once you passed Hanapepe Town, you really understood what it meant when they said Kauaʻi was “ground zero” for the GMO industry. From the mountains “mauka” to the ocean “makai” – everywhere there was corn. All the way until the end of the road at Polihale State Beach Park, there was nothing but corn.
GMO corn, experimental corn, corn grown for ethanol, for high fructose corn syrup, and for cattle feed. Corn grown to be shipped out in boxes labeled “unfit for human consumption”. Corn grown utilizing special federal permits that stated “not approved for release into the environment.”
Everywhere there was corn, grown year round, the continental U.S. equivalent of 3 growing seasons, using 3 times the amount of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides that a normal Iowa corn farm might use. What’s the saying? Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink. That’s how it felt. This massive amount of agriculture that was anything but food.
There was corn, corn, everywhere but yet not a kernel to really eat. This was industrial GMO agriculture designed by and for chemical companies so they could make more money selling more chemicals.
Yes, the penny dropped indeed. People around the island were concerned. Residents on the west side especially sensed a general increase in health issues. There seemed to be more people dealing with cancer, more neighbors and more children having respiratory issues.
In the evenings, when the fields were often sprayed, people complained of the smell, and sometimes of even a faint but foul taste of chemical. Families began shutting their windows in the evening to escape the unnatural odor and the ever-present red dirt that blew in from the fields.
At the Waimea Canyon Middle School, there were times when the kids would get sick and have to be taken to the nearby hospital. The companies denied of course it was the spraying of toxic pesticides in the adjacent fields that caused the trauma. Syngenta itself conveniently led the investigation concluding an innocuous “stink weed” was to blame.
Then, a west side resident told me about the lawsuit. 150 local residents in the town of Waimea a community of only 1,700 people total had filed charges against Dupont/Pioneer, the largest employer in the community for contaminating their homes with dust and pesticide drift. Led by long time resident Klayton Kubo, the message was loud and clear. The people of Waimea were literally sick and so very tired of the abuse blowing down upon them from the nearby GMO test fields.
This was the final straw for me that pushed the issue over the top. Waimea was a plantation town, its residents were either former sugar plantation workers or descendants of those plantation workers. Dupont/Pioneer was the new plantation and for plantation workers to sue the plantation – was unheard of.
So when I met with Sol Kahn, Fern Holland and the others that evening of November 20, 2012 – I knew in my heart they were right to be concerned and that yes, as their Council member and as their uncle, I must indeed do something and to be successful it must be we, all of us together focused on making it happen.
Fortunately, this was not my first rodeo. In retrospect, my previous 13 years of experience serving first on the Kauaʻi Council, then in the Hawaiʻi Senate as Majority Leader, plus working for Governor Abercrombie as State Director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control – had prepared me well for the task at hand.
My previous experience had taught me that men in suits, high-paid lawyers, and industry executives were to be challenged, not feared or bowed down to. I’d learned the importance of doing my homework, of choosing my words carefully, and to never accept the words of industry (or the lawyers) at face value. I understood the basics of law-making, of bill drafting, and of the importance of having community support and the facts solidly on your side. Most of all I knew how to count votes, and I knew not to push the vote until the votes were there. I might not have had a law degree, but I was thoroughly schooled in the area of politics and policy at both the State and County level.
When I left Sol’s house that night and headed to my own home just a few miles down the road, I was both exhausted and pumped. I remember speaking with my wife Claudette about that conversation and those young people who called me uncle. I remember discussing with her my obligation to follow through on “seeing what I could do to help”. I also remember sleeping very little that night, tossing and turning as my mind raced down various paths, plans, and strategies of “next steps”.
I awoke in the morning knowing the first order of business was to do my homework. Who were these companies? What exactly were they doing in my community? What were they growing? What chemicals were they using?
Thus began my journey down the path of Bill 2491. It started with a living room conversation, and transitioned rapidly to homework and basic research. After numerous additional living room conversations with that initial group, and with many others young and old, from all corners of our island – and around the globe actually, 8 months later on June 26, 2013, Bill 2491 was formally introduced.
I had no idea at the time how challenging, how tumultuous, how important, and how life-changing the experience of the coming months would be for me and so many others.
This is mostly a Kauaʻi story, though similar battles were occurring on Maui, on Hawaiʻi Island, and across the planet.
And this is my story, seen through my eyes. There are many similar yet different stories to be told by the many others who likewise played critical roles in our common quest to make our community safer, and the epic battle that followed.
Read on and soon you will understand why I use that word so often.
Chapter 2 – Big lies disguised as little lies – Doing the Homework
As I promised Sol and Fern, shortly after that first living room meeting I began “looking into it” – doing my basic homework on the industry. What companies were operating on Kauaʻi? How much land were they using? What were they growing? What pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides were they using, where were they using it, and how much were they using?
I soon discovered that there were four companies on Kauaʻi actively doing both experimental GMO research and “parent seed production”. This is when it became clear that these companies were not really “seed companies” as they called themselves, but in reality were “chemical companies” – they were four of the largest chemical companies on the planet. Their primary source of income and profits was developing, manufacturing, and selling chemicals – pesticides and the like.
BASF SE was a German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world with sales of 72.3 billion US$ in 2020.
Syngenta was at the time a Swiss company and is now owned by Chinese conglomerate ChemChina/Sinopec, who also claims to be the largest chemical company in the world.
Dow AgroSciences – US-based and #3 in world chemical production.
Dupont/Pioneer – U.S. based chemical and hybrid seed company.
All four have since merged, changed their names, and or left Kauaʻi. Note: Monsanto closed its Kauaʻi operation in 2010 and thus was not an active player in the Bill 2491 saga.
As a newly elected member of the County Council, I decided to just cut to the chase, meet with the executives of the 4 Kauaʻi companies, express my concerns, and ask them directly many of the questions being asked by the community.
So I did. We met in a downstairs conference room at the historical county building on Rice street. I remember clearly it was a very cordial meeting where my questions were evaded and I was fed huge chunks of industry talking points.
The industry executives felt compelled to constantly reassure me they were good guys, doing good work, and their companies were an important part of our community (read economy).
When I asked what experimental GMO crops were being grown, they said they couldn’t tell me. Proprietary information – trade secrets they said.
Move along, nothing to see here – “The technology is safe, we are already highly regulated, and we are feeding the world” was the mantra repeated ad nauseam.
When I explained the community health concerns and asked what chemicals and pesticides were being used and in what quantities, I was told they could not tell me. Proprietary information – trade secrets they said.
In an effort to reassure me I suppose, they then told me the pesticides used by their companies were safe and were the same pesticides every other farmer uses.
The meeting closed, we shook hands, and the industry executives went home.
I know what gaslighting looks like. I had been in many a room before this with cocky executives attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of uninformed politicians. The messaging was clear. These were educated scientists. I was just an ignorant small town councilmember who knew nothing of the science, nor the importance of their work.
I rolled up my sleeves and immediately began making telephone calls.
The first person I called was Earth Justice (EJ) attorney Paul Achitoff who headed the Hawaiʻi Mid-Pacific office. As those young people did to me a few weeks prior, I now did to a friend and ally who had a wealth of experience in these matters.
“Paul, I need your help on this.” I said.
“Absolutely,” was his immediate response.
Next, I reached out to Andrew (Andy) Kimbrell head of the Center for Food Safety (CFS) with the same question. Andy’s response was an enthusiastic “Yes, let’s do this.” He then introduced me to his brother George and Sylvia Shih-Yau Wu, all top-flight attorneys with deep experience in the subject-matter and a steadfast commitment to fighting for health and justice.
These four highly qualified nationally recognized attorneys were joined on the ground by local Kauaʻi attorney Elif Beal who had become part of what were now our regular living room meetings. This illustrious group was then ultimately backed up at times by another half dozen outstanding lawyers including Teri Tico the former head of the Kauaʻi Bar Association, retired former Hawaiʻi Supreme Court Justice Steven Levinson, and Native Hawaiian Legal Corp attorney Alan Murakami.
Very quickly, my learning curve turned into a learning right angle heading straight up.
Paul from EJ and the attorneys from CFS began researching the legal precedent and assembling a list of what other states and localities have done.
I began a deep dive into all of it. I dove down into the history of Kauaʻi kids getting sick at Waimea Canyon Middle School, I discovered a “50,000 sea urchin die-off” that occurred on the coast near the fields.
The industry executives made a big deal about “reading and following the labels” and so I began reading pesticide labels. Some of these labels were 50 pages long with skulls and cross bones along-side paragraph after paragraph of instructions on how to apply the stuff without killing fish, wildlife, or humans.
These were not your mothers labels. This was not just the Miracle Grow you grab at the five and dime to throw on the rose bush you’ve been fighting with.
I requested the “Restricted Use Pesticides (RUP) sales records from the State Department of Agriculture (SDOA) for Kauaʻi. RUP’s can only be purchased and used by individuals who have a special license to do so. You can’t buy RUP’s at Walmart or Home Depot.
This was some bad, bad, nasty bad stuff. Much of it banned in other countries. The kind of stuff that you certainly don’t want to be using around children or pregnant women, or old people with pre-existing conditions, or anyone really.
I then contacted the State Department of Health (SDOH) seeking to review the Federal GMO permits that were supposed to be on file. I also reached out to the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) to check on the public land leases held by the companies.
After months of research, I knew for a fact what I had felt in my stomach the moment that first meeting was over. Those executives had lied to me.
They told me little lies that were actually big lies. These were the same lies the industry tells the world over and over again to reassure those who raise questions. They are feeding the world, they are highly regulated, the work being done and the chemicals being used are safe.
It’s absolutely categorically not true.
These companies are not feeding the world. The vast majority of corn grown by them is used for ethanol, high-fructose corn syrup, and cattle feed. They feed only diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cars.
The GMO research being done is primarily centered around making crops “pesticide/herbicide resistant” thus allowing the chemical companies the opportunity to sell more chemicals. The so-called golden rice research announced decades ago is still nothing but a pipe dream – window dressing for the industry to trot out whenever they need to justify their claim of feeding the world. *see footnote explaining Golden Rice
A cursory review of their income statements and corporate balance sheets will show clearly that these international conglomerates make a majority of their money developing and selling industrial chemicals including highly toxic pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
The “this GMO research is safe” narrative runs contrary to the federal permit that says “not for release into the natural environment” and “not for human consumption”. They were/are ostensibly growing experimental “food crops” that you’re not allowed to eat. The companies are hopeful that ultimately the food crops they are experimenting with today will someday be approved as real food by the federal government.
AND these non edible food crops were/are being grown outdoors in open fields even though they are not approved for release into the environment.
What could possibly go wrong?
“The industry is already highly regulated” is also a false narrative. While on the surface it appears to be true, the truth is there’s just a facade of high regulation. No doubt there’s lots of paperwork, pages and pages of forms to fill out, and lots of fancy sounding government agencies managed by former industry executives – but there’s very little actual direct over-sight of the industry.
The industry tells the federal regulator “our proposed research is safe” and provides the regulator with documents explaining how they came to that conclusion. The regulator may or may not actually do an independent review before stamping the application “safe and approved” which is then filed away, never to be seen again. Essentially the industry is self-regulated both in the review of their initial research permit applications, and with regards to follow-up reporting requirements.
This is not hyperbole. After learning of a law requiring companies doing GMO research in Hawaiʻi to provide the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health (SDOH) with copies of their federal permits – I went searching for those same permits (federal permits on file with the state).
After making a few inquiries and a trip to Honolulu, I was directed to a room (more like a large closet) that contained several dozen unopened boxes, that further contained hundreds of unopened envelopes, that contained federal permits allowing these companies to grow experimental GMO crops in Hawaiʻi. So I did what should have been done by actual regulators, I opened the envelopes and actually read the (heavily redacted) permits.
No one from the State Department of Health had ever even looked at these permits. They never even opened the envelopes. They just assumed the documentation was there and was done correctly.
It seems, the Hawaiʻi law doesn’t actually require any permit review, but merely requires the industry to provide a copy of the permit. And, if anyone actually opened the envelope, they would find a heavily redacted document difficult and sometimes impossible to decipher.
Highly regulated? I’m not sure by what definition that could be true.
Except when there were incidents such as when field workers suffered pesticide poisoning and it made the headlines, no representative of the EPA or the FDA or any federal organization charged with regulating this industry ever comes to Kauaʻi.
Many of the pesticides used by these companies are banned in other countries around the world. The toxic herbicide atrazine which was used widely in the corn fields all over Kauaʻi has been banned for the past 20 years in 31 countries including Switzerland, where it was first patented and where Syngenta is/was headquartered.
That’s right. Syngenta was using a toxic chemical by the ton Kauaʻi which they were prohibited by law from using in their own country.
Upon further digging I found numerous scientific studies showing that atrazine contamination is ubiquitous in European and North American surface waters, and has been detected in more than 800 drinking water systems in 19 states at levels exceeding health-protective guidelines.
These company executives looked me in the eye and told me they were only using what every other farmer was using, and it was all safe.
Yes, another big lie disguised as a little one. What they meant to say is that they only use what every other chemical company growing experimental GMO corn uses. After finally obtaining the data from the Hawaiʻi Department of Agriculture it became clear that most regular farmers growing real food to eat use only a tiny fraction of the pesticides used by these companies, both in terms of variety and quantity used.
The more I dug, the more I said to myself “wow” I can’t believe this, and the more motivated I became to find out what else was being hidden from my community.
When reporting back to our growing citizen “GMO living-room working group” the outrage and the determination to do something just kept building.
It became ludicrous at times with countless “Can’t make this stuff up” moments.
I once witnessed an industry official who actually said out-loud and on camera, “Well, it’s almost like the real thing” when discussing GMO tomato’s.
On a whim I checked with the County Finance Department and discovered that two of these billion dollar chemical companies were not paying their Kauai property taxes. In addition, because these large wealthy transnational corporations transfer their end products to related subsidiaries outside of Hawaiʻi, and some also benefit from Enterprise Zone and other General Excise Tax (GET) exemptions, they consequently pay zero GET tax on the products they produce and sell. *See footnote on GET
I started looking at the land ownership records and found about half the land used for GMO production on Kauai was leased from the State. These were publicly owned State lands that were former Hawaiian Kingdom Crown Lands.
The use of State lands require compliance with Hawaii’s environmental review law Chapter 343HRS, yet no documentation demonstrating compliance exists.
See footnote3
Using publicly owned lands that abut a pristine coast line, growing experimental genetically modified organisms outside of a greenhouse, openly spraying a wide array of restricted and non restricted pesticides on a mass scale next to neighborhoods, schools, and parks – most defnately have impacts on health and environment.
These impacts have never been reviewed, evaluated or even measured. There are direct impacts, secondary impacts and cumulative impacts but we don’t know what those impacts are – and the companies in question won’t even give us the information needed to make a proper evaluation.
It was time to start writing a bill.
I called Paul Achitoff again and after a long discussion we agreed, “Let’s start with disclosure. They’re telling us it’s safe so why would they not be willing to tell us what they are growing and spraying? This is a reasonable ask. In any case, until we know exactly what they are doing, it’s impossible to study the health and environmental impacts so we must have disclosure.”
And so it began. And as disturbing as the information that had already been discovered was, in the weeks and months ahead it would only get worse.
DRAFT – Chapter 3 – Writing The Bill
So the process of bill writing began.
Working with Paul Achitoff of Earth Justice (EJ) and the Center for Food Safety (CFS) we started drafting a bill that would hopefully become a County ordinance requiring the agrochemical industry to disclose what pesticides they were using, and what experimental crops they were growing in Kauai County.
The purpose of course was to ultimately protect the health of residents and the islands natural environment. But first, we needed the data.
One of the first questions to be answered was: Did the County even have the legal authority to pass such an ordinance?
Our legal research concluded there was no state or federal law prohibiting the county from doing so and no court had ever ruled on the question. We found also that federal law explicitly gave states the right to regulate pesticides, and counties were also allowed to “further regulate” unless prohibited by the state from doing so.
This legal principle is called “preemption”. It’s important and we’ll come back to it later.
Our legal team said, there was nothing in the law or in any court decision telling us we couldn’t do it, and so we should go for it.
So legally we were good to go (or so we thought at the time), so we went.
Politically we knew passing such an ordinance would be an uphill battle but we really had no idea that this would end up without exaggeration being the battle of a lifetime.
At the time I personally had no idea of the storm that was to come, but I did know enough to understand the coming discussion must be limited to only these large companies if possible.
I had enough experience in drafting and passing laws at both the county and state level to know the bill had to be narrow in scope and avoid impacting every single gardener, small farmer, and occasional user of regular “over-the -counter” pesticides.
We had to focus only on the big guys and most egregious users of the most nasty and dangerous of the chemicals. If the bill was too broad and impacted too many small users, the public opposition would be swift and insurmountable.
So we kept it narrow targeting only the largest users of Restricted Use Pesticides (RUP’s) and included a component that required disclosure of any experimental food crops, not approved for release into the environment.
Kaboom. We were good to go (or so I thought). We had the makings of a bill that if passed into law would yield valuable information leading to the next steps limiting or eliminating those uses and/or impacts.
I took the draft to Fern for her thoughts and hopefully, her approval.
She was gentle yet ruthless in her dismissal. This will never fly she said.“Woefully inadequate and miles away from what the people want, which is to kick those fucking companies off our island.” are the words I remember.
My response was to try my best to explain that we did not possess the legal authority to kick those fucking companies off our island, nor would we likely have the political support for such an action.
Kauai is a small community and these companies were major employers of hundreds of local residents.
Even if we had the legal authority or figured out a way to make it happen, there was no way we could get the 5 council votes needed to pass such a bill and over-ride the inevitable mayoral veto.
Kicking them off the island was never going to happen and we needed to focus on what we can do, I told her as gently as I could.
“I got it, but we need more” was her response, “If you want to motivate young people, if you want the room packed with people testifying in support, we need more.”
“Ok, I get it…what if we add pesticide-free buffer zones around schools, parks, and houses…does that work?” I said.
“That’s better but still not enough” she said, “Can’t we just get rid of the GMO stuff altogether? Like ban it from the islands?”
“I’ll check with the lawyers” I said “but I’m pretty sure federal law won’t let us ban the growing of GMO’s. Maybe however we can put into place regulations that say experimental food crops, those not approved for release into the environment – can only be grown in green houses or similar indoor facilities.”
“I think we’re getting somewhere now” she responded.
So I went back to work, huddled again with the lawyers, worked on the words, reviewed draft after draft, definition after definition – trying each time to be increasingly clear on what the bill proposed to accomplish and who would be impacted. The EJ and CFS attorneys researched what similar legislation had been passed in other municipalities around the United States, looking for language and ideas that had worked elsewhere.
There was no shortage of examples of pesticide regulation occurring in other counties and municipalities around the country including buffer zones and disclosure, but when it came to the GMO segment, there was slim pickings. It seemed no county anywhere where the industry was established had managed to regulate them as we proposed to do.
After countless conversation among legal, and scientific experts the final (or so we thought) bill draft was ready. I called Fern and Sol and suggested we convene our “working group” that had started out as a simple conversation in that Wailua living room a few months earlier.
I remember clearly that night. There were about 7 of us in the room. I passed out copies of the proposed bill gave everyone a few minutes to review it, provided a brief overview, and then asked if there were any questions. One young man, a surfer by the name of Makai, raised his hand and asked quickly, “Is this going to keep them from crossing the river?”
He was referring to the Wailua River and the fact that 100% of the existing fields were located on the Southside of that waterway. To the north (where most of the folks in that room lived), from the Wailua River to Hanalei Bay were thousands of acres of agricultural land mostly used for cattle grazing.
“No” I said, “Nothing in this bill will keep them from expanding to other agricultural lands north of the river, should they choose to do so.”
“Well that’s fucked” was his response which was then echoed around the room.
All the work. All the effort, that had gone into this measure, and the results and draft I had put on the table, still fell short for those who had started this conversation in the first place.
It still wasn’t good enough.
I was pretty much devastated. The meeting ended soon after that moment, and I went home and poured my heart out to Claudette.
“So…what are you going to do?” she said…as she has done so many other times in our 40 years of marriage when I found myself in similar seemingly intractable situations.
“I’ll think about it” I said “I’ll figure it out.”
So I did.
I went back to the drawing board. I spoke to the attorneys, and I met and spoke at length with my (now deceased) colleague Councilmember Tim Bynum who had agreed to co-sponsor and co-introduce the bill with me. I spoke to Fern, Sol, Elif Beal, and others. I wracked my brain.
Then “the penny dropped”. While we did not have the legal authority or likely the political support to kick them fucking out or ban their operations, we likely did have the legal authority and possibly the political support to pass a “temporary moratorium” on any future expansion – subject to the industry proving it was safe via an environmental impact statement.
It sounded reasonable enough – Include a provision in the bill that prohibited expansion until the health and environmental impact of the industries operation on Kauai was fully known and the public was fully informed. It would likely be politically acceptable because it let the companies continue doing what they were doing, did not shut them down, and thus did not impact jobs – but prevented their expansion until the EIS was completed and accepted which would likely take years to complete.
If passed, the measure as it was now written, would in fact keep them from crossing the river.
Kaboom. We had a bill. There were 6 key component and each if necessary could stand on its own.
* Disclosure of Restricted Use Pesticides
* Disclosure of experimental GMO growing
* Pesticide buffer-zones around schools, hospitals and houses
* Banning of out-door growing of experimental GMO food crops
* A moratorium on the industries expansion until completion of an environmental impact statement.
* A “permitting requirement” requiring county permits for restricted pesticide use and experimental GMO crops – paid for by the companies themselves via permitting fees.
Up until this point the process had been done on the “down low”. We had not wanted to alert the industry ahead of time as we knew they would immediately go on the attack.
Councilmember Bynum and I huddled to discuss strategy and consulted yet again and again with our friends at Earth Justice, The Center for Food Safety, and others that now included attorneys connected to The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation and experts affiliated with the national Pesticide Action Network.
Fern Holland, Sol Kahn, and Elif Beal were joined by Andrea Brower and Phoebe Ng and many many others who began brainstorming community based outreach and action. Fern and Sol connected further with Dustin Barca a well known surfer and MMA fighter who had been actively and very publicly fighting to kick out the GMO industry from Hawaii.
Separate from the discussions surrounding the proposed bill were growing/festering community concerns about the health of west-side residents and in general the overwhelming presence of the GMO industry on the island and through-out the state of Hawaii. A group of west-siders led by long time resident Klayton Kubo had filed suit against Dupont/Pioneer claiming both negative health impacts and property damage that was occurring from the pervasive pesticide laden red dust blowing in from the nearby fields.
The people on the ground were basically mad as hell and were not going to take it anymore.
The final draft of our proposed county ordinance was formally submitted to the Council and scheduled for its initial hearing on June 26, 2013. It was forever after referred to as Bill 2491.
It was game on.
A copy of the original bill 2491draft submitted to the Council on this day is here: http://kauai.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1085&meta_id=49075
Read: The Truth About Bill 2491 https://garyhooser.blog/2013/07/20/the-truth-about-bill-2491-relating-to-pesticides-and-genetically-modified-organisms/
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Note to readers: The above represents an initial draft of the first 3 Chapters of my very first book that is a “work in progress” 😉 During the coming weeks and months I will be writing and rewriting and adding subsequent chapters. While I enjoy writing “commentary” and blogging…I’ve never written a book before. So hang in there and put up with my errors, constant corrections and rewrites. Please let me know if you have suggestions, corrections or edits you might also suggest.
To be clear, there are many stories to be told through the eyes of many who were involved in Bill 2491. This story is just one of them.
For those interested in digging deep into the topic and the historical roots of the movement, I encourage you to read Andrea Noelani Brower’s book “seeds of occupation, seeds of possibility” The Agrochemical-GMO Industry in Hawaiʻi – available at West Virginia University Press BROWERSEED30 is the 30% discount code!
Take the time also to watch “Poisoning Paradise” Produced by Pierce Brosnan and his wife Keely Brosnan, and directed by Teresa Tico. Available Free on Amazon Prime!
And when you get a moment read BREAKFAST AT MONSANTO’S: Is Roundup in our food making us fatter, sicker, and sadder? by Kauai resident Dr. Lee Evslin.
Unopened boxes containing federal GMO permits plus copies of the permit, once I opened the box and started reading:
*Footnote1: Golden Rice a genetically modified variety of rice containing large amounts of the orange or red plant pigment betacarotene, a substance important in the human diet as a precursor of vitamin A. It has been under development for decades but never approved for human consumption.
Footnote2: The Hawaii General Excise Tax is a state tax applied to wholesaling, retailing, farming, services, construction contracting, rental of personal or real property, business interest income, and royalties.
Footnote3: HRS 343 is Hawaii’s environmental impact statement law that requires an environmental review of any development on public lands and/or on the coast line.
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