New and Improved Santa Sweets: ”A Little Less Poisonous!”
Plant City's Ag-mart was just fined a record amount by Florida for forcing workers into dangerous pesticide-laden fields and harvesting produce too soon after applying poisons.
Florida agriculture officials have slapped Ag-Mart Inc., one of the state's largest vegetable growers, with $111,200 in fines for 88 counts of pesticide misuse.
The "extensive violations" breached regulations designed to ensure consumer and worker safety, according to agriculture documents.
Ag-Mart officials declined to comment Wednesday on the state's action, which came little more than a week after the company announced it planned to stop using many of the pesticides in its arsenal.
The violations were uncovered during an investigation into the births several months ago of three malformed babies to farmworkers in Immokalee.
But in a report made public Wednesday, the state health department said it could find no link between the agricultural chemicals and the birth defects, which left one baby without arms and legs and another with a cleft palate and severe facial abnormalities. The third baby, born with multiple defects died shortly after birth. The mother of that child lost another malformed baby nearly two years before.
"This report might be more important for identifying what we don't know than what we do know," said Jay Feldman of the New York-based National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides.
The infants' parents worked in Ag-Mart tomato fields in Florida and North Carolina and lived near each other during the critical time period.
......Companies that do not comply with pesticide laws put consumers and farmworkers at risk, she said. Pesticide labels specify how soon a crop can be harvested after chemicals are applied, as well as how soon workers can re-enter the fields.
Sixty-five of the 88 violations Ag-Mart was cited for involve harvesting crops before the seven-day waiting period, in some cases picking the vegetables the day after they were sprayed.
Despite this, routine spot checks did not turn up illegal pesticide residues, according to agriculture officials.But that does not equate to food that's safe to eat or a field that's safe to work in, Feldman said.
For one thing, there are many pesticides -- some of them known endocrine disruptors -- for which the federal government has not set legal residue limits."Given this birth defect cluster and what it suggests, it really should be cause for evaluating whether the agency is looking at the problem in the best manner and whether it needs to do a better job of tracking exposures," Feldman said.
A Broward County lawyer representing the three families in the case calls the state's effort "a noninvestigation."
"Clearly they're looking for every reason to find no relationship to pesticides. Yet they can arrive at no other explanation," attorney Andrew Yaffa of Boca Raton said.
Similar fines are reportedly pending in North Carolina, and New Jersey is investigating possible violations in that state.
A day after Florida agriculture officials fined tomato-grower Ag-Mart Produce $111,200 in a complaint citing 88 pesticide violations, agriculture officials in North Carolina confirmed Thursday they had notified the company of at least as many violations in their state.
North Carolina agriculture officials would not elaborate on their findings or the amount of the fine until the company received notice via certified mail, a spokesman said.
An Environmental Protection Agency official in Washington confirmed that in North Carolina, it is alleged that Ag-Mart applied some pesticides more often than allowed by the label. The EPA, along with other federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, plans to analyze findings of the investigations in Florida and North Carolina, the EPA official said.
The company, which grows the popular Santa Sweets grape tomato, operates farms in Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey and Mexico.
Other investigations continue. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection confirmed Thursday that it, too, is investigating Ag-Mart's pesticide "use and practices" in that state. North Carolina health officials confirmed this week that they also are investigating Ag-Mart.
What does a company do when it's under fire for misusing chemicals and putting its workers and customers at great risk, possibly even causing birth defects? It slaps an “Organic” label on its products and touts its goal of ''protecting our most precious resources -the air we breathe and the land we cultivate.''
So, human life does not make the top two precious resources, but farm workers already knew that. And a field that was saturated with chemicals last season can be used for organic produce this year, instantly giving the grower some kind of environmental cred. Nice.
And even as the company appeals the decision for over $111,000 in fines by the Florida Department of Agriculture, Ag-Mart's president is among an elite group hosting a political fundraiser for Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson. I bet there's no chemical residue on the tomatoes at that particular soirée.
Ag-Mart President Don Long is on the 10-member host committee for the Nov. 9 event to be held in Naples.
......Invitations listing Long as a member of the host committee have been mailed.
Bronson said Thursday that he does not know who is going to the event, nor does he see a conflict of interest.
"Just because someone has had a fine or someone has had a problem doesn't mean that they can't be a part of the system ... and that means even a re-election campaign," he said.
Priorities
No money for the homeless (an elite group that has little to pay), but a new $40 million sports complex? No problem.
Today is the first time in five years commissioners are divvying some of the half-cent sales tax, with nearly $350 million up for grabs. The tax is expected to generate $4.8 billion before expiring in 2027.
Proposed projects in this funding round include $66 million for a 768-bed expansion of Falkenburg Road Jail, $50 million for stormwater drainage improvements and $40 million for an amateur sports complex backed by commission Chairman Jim Norman.
......Commissioner Kathy Castor said the project list has not received as much public input or planning as earlier funding rounds. She suggested commissioners might want to consider postponing today's vote.
Norman's proposed Championship Park is likely to get the most attention.
......Former Commissioner Joe Chillura authored the 1996 CIT referendum to help build the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' football stadium and pay for schools and other "public facilities" and infrastructure. He supports Championship Park.
"It is basically serving the general public," Chillura said. "It fills the bill more than a history center or art museum, which serve an elitist group that has little to say and little to pay."
Plans call for a 22,000-seat football and soccer arena, a baseball field with stands for 3,000 and a track that could accommodate another 1,500 spectators. Along with practice fields, the complex would be built on 425 acres off State Road 39 about 3 miles north of Interstate 4 on property the county owns known as the Cone Ranch.
......Commissioners have committed all of the money from the Community Investment Tax through 2008. But county finance officials expect the tax to raise another $1.4-billion from 2008 through 2026 that has not been committed.
......Tampa Bay Water owns the rights to pump water from much of the 12,000-acre Cone Ranch property, which it may do in the future. Hillsborough County has fought those plans, fearing damage from the pumping in an area that helps replenish the Hillsborough River.
Castor said she felt such a facility should be built in an area where growth is taking place and expressed concern about such intensive development in a rural area.
"This is a very interesting idea," she said. "I'm concerned that we undermine our argument about the environmental sensitivity of this area."
......The center isn't intended as a corner ball field for recreational league softball or pick-up games, he said. It is meant to attract players and teams from sanctioned leagues that come to town, stay in hotels and bring their tourist dollars with them.
Yeah, the general public. Well, the general part of the public that is not at all concerned about drinking water and rampant piecemeal over development of environmentally sensitive lands.
State coddles criminal phosphate producer
Mosaic, the new Cargill phosphate entity has been lightly slapped on the wrist for a huge toxic spill that was mostly lost amid the roar of many hurricanes last year.
The owner of a Riverview phosphate factory has been fined $270,000 over a dike that broke during Hurricane Frances, dumping millions of gallons of acidic wastewater into a nearby creek.
An investigation by state environmental regulators determined that the breach allowed 65-million gallons of waste from a phosphate processing plant to flow into Archie Creek, which leads to Hillsborough Bay.
The spill posed no threat to humans but killed fish and other sea life and may have damaged fragile mangroves and sea grass beds. A federal-state investigation is continuing and could lead to more penalties.
The fine, announced Friday by the state Department of Environmental Protection, covers only the factory's violations of state water quality standards by allowing the waste to flow unchecked into the creek. The waste, which is both slightly acidic and radioactive, violated standards for arsenic, heavy metals and a variety of other pollutants.
The DEP can levy fines of as much as $10,000 per day for each violation, agency spokeswoman Cragin Mosteller said.
DEP levied the fine against Mosaic, the largest phosphate producer in the world, with annual revenues of $4.5-billion.
Mosaic was formed last year when Cargill Crop Nutrition, which owned the Riverview plant, merged with industry giant IMC-Global.
Because the spill happened during a raging hurricane, we'll never know the true extent of the damage, but Cargill was definitely not being a good neighbor at the time.
Twice warned by state regulators that a thin dike wall and higher than usual water levels could lead to disaster, Cargill failed to fix problems with it's waste reservoir in a timely manner, resulting in the discharge of 70 million gallons of radioactive sludge mixed with highly acidic water into environmentally sensitive Tampa Bay.
Then, once it became apparent that a spill was imminent, or even in progress, Cargill ignored local lines of communication which may have allowed for quick containment help and called the industry friendly state DEP instead. Local authorities found out about the spill from a DEP press conference in Talahassee - these guys failed to notify even their closest neighbors that they were in the process of spilling and killing,
Once word of the spill, er, leaked out, Cargill downplayed its significance, maintaining that this was a manageable event, that Cargill was treating the overflow to prevent damage, and that there was nothing to worry about.
Since this weekend's spill, we've had rain every day, and Ivan is quite possibly coming to dump even more water in our area. Now, Cargill says that it will have to "relocate" another 90 million gallons of waste water to prevent another catastrophic spill. Cargill is in the process of drawing down the reservoir, transferring some water to another stack, and releasing ever more water into the containment berm around the faulty reservoir.
Once in the berm, it will be treated with lime to make it somewhat less toxic. Well, that's the official spin, but this treatment will simply raise the pH level to make the discharge a little less acidic. It will do nothing to clean nasty contaminants like arsenic and mercury and radiation. Then, after "treatment", the toxic stew in the berm will be released into Archie creek and flow directly into Tampa Bay.
As well as carcinogenic heavy metals, the mixture of water and radioactive waste and lime contains tons of phosphorus and nitrogen - the raw materials of fertilizer - which, when released into a body of water, feeds algae growth, which lowers oxygen levels, which kills fish and leads to dead zones.
More Cargill coverage from BlogWood.
