“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world,” anthropologist Margaret Mead once asserted. “Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

One such micro organization, Barrio de Colores, may not have changed the world when it took on the mighty U.S. Border Patrol (BP), but it certainly forced the agency back on its heels, no mean feat.

Their clash revolved around the thick stands of Carrizo cane that grow along the Rio Grande River, in and around Laredo. The BP had proposed to eradicate a 1.5 mile stretch of the tall tangle-the plant can soar upwards of 30 feet–through aerial spraying; helicopters, armed with the herbicide imazapyr, were scheduled to lay down the toxin in late March.

They have yet to leave the ground: nearby residents quickly formed Barrio de Colores, through whose good offices they then filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the BP had ignored key environmental regulations. Strikingly, the agency stood down, and agreed to remove the cane through mechanical means and by hand-painting stumps with imazapyr.

The plaintiffs have every right to proud of their achievement, so quickly gained.

Theirs is, alas, an all-too-rare accomplishment. For more than three years grassroots organizations have challenged the Bush Administration’s decision to harden the border by any means possible.

From Texas to California, they rallied against bulldozers scraping wide swaths through urban neighborhoods, rural ranchlands, public parks, and wilderness preserves; opposed backhoes as they dug trenches so that construction crews could erect triple-thick chain-link fences and concrete walls; and tried to halt workers from stringing barbed wire, fitting high-intensity lighting, or mounting high-tech surveillance cameras atop the newly built infrastructure.

All to no avail. Just how unchecked federal power has been along the borderlands is captured in the chilling photographs of this now-fortified landscape-these stark images evoke nothing so much as the sinister Berlin Wall.

To complete the Cold War-like montage of a brutalized terrain and an abject population, scan the sky for helicopters. Some swoop along the border at night and with powerful infrared searchlights illuminate those crossing into the United States under the cover of darkness. Others choppers were to have made daytime sorties, targeting not undocumented migrants or smugglers but the noxious Carrizo cane.

So convinced was the Border Patrol of the rectitude of its decision; so compliant were local politicians who bowed before its authority, that it did not think twice about the consequences of launching helicopters in a scorched-earth campaign against the nonnative plant. As for the broad-spectrum herbicide it thought perfect for the job, imazapyr seemed so apt in part because of the martial monikers under which it is marketed– “Arsenal” and “Assault.”

By all accounts, it is deadly: when applied, imazapyr attacks foliage and roots, interfering with DNA synthesis and cell growth. Yet it is an indiscriminate killer. Although the Bush-controlled EPA re-approved imazapyr in 2006, the agency conceded that it is particularly lethal to rare and endangered species. It also affirmed that while the herbicide is not carcinogenic and has no known impact on human reproduction–an affirmation the BP used to justify its decision to employ it–direct contact may result in rashes, swelling, and other irritations.

The Critical Habitat Project has offered a more blunt assessment of the chemical compound’s possible effects: “one primary breakdown product of Imazapyr is quinolinic acid which is a neurotoxin and can cause symptoms similar to those in Huntington’s chorea such as loss of coordination and trembling.”

Such troubling information about imazapyr’s possible complications was what propelled those living in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo to mount a highly public, cross-border protest. It also undercuts BP spokesman’s blustery rebuttal of the agency’s critics: “We’re not out to ‘poison’ anybody. I find that word a little bit over the top,” spokesman Chuck Prichard said. “We’re just the guy that needed his house painted … This is the method they chose. Based on what we know this would be an effective, low-risk way to do this.”

House-painting: if only the Border Patrol’s plans had been so benign. But if they had been, why not just issue warnings to those living in Los Dos Laredos? Why not file an Environmental Impact Statement about imazapyr’s worrisome potential? The Border Patrol did not do so because it felt free to violate federal law, endanger public health, and pollute the earth in the name of homeland security.

Happily, its self-declared freedom of action was curtailed in this case-thanks to that small band of activists, “Barrio De Colores.”

Char Miller is visiting professor of history and environmental analysis at Pomona College, and author of Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas, and editor of On the Border: An Environmental History of San Antonio. His columns appear regularly in the Rio Grande Guardian.

Content is republished in full, with permission from the Rio Grande Guardian.

Major thanks should go to the Houston Chronicle’s Dane Schiller and Jim Newkirk. Dana for reporting this story and Jim linking my original post in the Chronicle’s Blog Watch section. That article immediately preceded the national media picking up on the issue. So thank you Houston Chronicle, without that article, the Border Patrol would probably be spraying right now.

There seems to be more good news. According to the Laredo Morning Times, Laredo City Council decided to reverse themselves and nix the aerial spraying of carrizo cane. LMT also reported that they also made a motion that would forbid the use herbicide’s all together.

According to Border Patrol, they said they had already taken aerial spraying off the table. The spraying of the Lower Rio Grande Valley with the herbicide would have broken an international environmental agreement, La Paz Agreement, that was signed by then-President Ronald Regan and the President of Mexico. The Agreement is a pact between the United States and Mexico to protect, conserve, and improve the environment of the border region of both countries. The agreement defined the region as the 62 miles to the north and south of the international border.

Carrizo cane, scientifically known as Arundo donax, is a giant reed native to the Mediterranean. The Spanish brought it to the US to control erosion in California’s stream beds. Since then, it has become a noxious weed, with large campaigns aimed at eradicating it.

Herbicidal warfare is a form of warfare in which the objective is to destroy the plant-based ecosystem of an area for the purpose of destroying plants which provide cover to an enemy. In the current “War on Immigrants and Drugs” the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol were not using imazapyr because they were concern about the ecological effects the carrizo cane had on Laredo, they had one goal in mind – simply to eradicate the plant because they felt the plant provided cover for undocumented immigrants.

Prior to Janet Napolitano becoming the new Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff had waived over 20 federal laws and overturned court orders to make sure the construction of the border wall would be complete. The laws waived included environmental acts, historic preservation acts and the entire Administrative Procedures Act. Chertoff cited his authority to do so under Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

All of this was to curb illegal immigration. Last July, presidential candidate Barack Obama took a stage in Berlin and told the crowd that a wall erected between people would best be knocked down.

The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

Today, the Obama Administration reversed itself when it comes to pushing for comprehensive immigration reform this year. Two weeks ago, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of Central American leaders comprehensive immigration reform was not top priority because of a slumping economy and soaring unemployment. However, today the Obama Administration has decided they will.

Mr. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system,” said the official, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

The Border Wall is part of the immigration debate. Despite pleas from some Democrats, activists, and local communities to halt construction until the wall’s impacts can be better examined, the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama has so far maintained the same border fence policies as the DHS under President Bush.

The military use of herbicides in Vietnam began in 1961, and reached a peak from 1967 to 1969. Agent Orange was part of the so-called “Rainbow Herbicides,” the group of herbicides that contained dioxins that were meant to destroy jungle canopy. As result of this herbicide warfare, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.

While scientists are still undecided on the health effects of imazapyr, we should not disregard the findings from iprivate study commissioned by the Alaska Community Action on Toxics. In a December 2008 press release by Forest Ethics, they noted that imazapyr “has been shown to increase the number of brain and thyroid cancers.” Even more frightening, imazapyr is considered to be “harmful to aquatic organisms” and recommended that imazapyr should “not allow to enter the aquatic environment” according to the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory of Oxford University.

There are “proven” alternatives to herbicide that could be used to accomplish the same objective without harm to the environment. A couple of years ago, Biopact, a Brussels-based group, reported that a Florida-based company, Biomass Investment Group (BIG), embarked on a project to use Arundo donax as the energy crop.

The biomass will be converted into bio-oil, a heavy fuel oil, via a fast-pyrolysis process (for more on this process see the EU/IEA Biomass Pyrolysis Network). This carbon-neutral oil will then be used in a power plant that will provide electricity to some 80,000 Floridian households.

It would seem logical in this “Green” era, we would utilize companies like this to our advantage. It would not only create much needed jobs, these “noxious weeds” can be used as a renewable resource.

We might have won this battle for now, but the struggle for a fair and humane immigration policy still wages on.

Border Patrol was hoping to eliminate the invasive Carrizo cane to improve the visibility along the border. The plan was to defoliate the area that was reminiscent to a tactic used in Vietnam to remove forest cover for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces.

The project that was to begin yesterday was stopped indefinitely over concerns raised by both sides of the border. Not surprisingly, Border Patrol claims they halted operations because of the concerns raised by the Mexican government officials. Roque Sarinana, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Laredo Sector, said that date has been pushed back to allow for further negotiations with Mexico.

It seems Border Patrol didn’t anticipate that people from both sides of the Rio Grande would be outraged over the spraying. Once word got around and the press got hold of the story, there was they could do but give. To counter, Border Patrol sought intergovernmental reinforcement to answer concerns whether the herbicide imazapyr poses an ecological and/or human threat.

The US Environmental Protection Agency claims there are no reason for concern from aggregate exposure to imazapyr residues. Although imazapyr is relatively nontoxic via the oral route of exposure, it is, however, slightly toxic if your skin comes into contact or it is inhaled.

EPA’s assessment is somewhat troubling. In the US, the herbicide as considered low-risk, however, outside the US, other countries do not come up with the same conclusion. The Laredo Morning Times reported that Mexico considers imazapyr to be medium risk, and in 2003, the European Union banned use of the herbicide.

Herbicides are most frequently implicated as the cause of fatal pesticide poisoning. There is hardly any information concerning the toxicity in humans after ingestion of herbicides containing imazapyr. However, I was able to find one study that challenges EPA’s findings.

In 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News, reported that the Canadian Department of National Defense and the US military used portions of the Canadian Forces Base (CFB), Gagetown, New Brunswick as a testing ground for the defoliants Agent Orange and Agent Purple during the 1960s. What makes this investigative report intriguing, the DND hired an independent contractor, Cantox Environmental, to determine whether exposures to the herbicides and their associated contaminants may be potential risks to human health and the environment. Interestingly, imazapyr was once of the herbicides Cantox investigated.

In Cantox’s Imazapyr profile, one of their findings refutes a claim that EPA made about imazapyr. EPA is on record saying that imazapyr is relatively nontoxic if swallowed, however, under the heading Toxicological Summary, Cantox cites a study that says otherwise:

During 1993 to 1997, six cases of acute poisoning with Arsenal (active ingredient imazapyr) occurred (Lee et al., 1999). Of the six cases, five were suicide attempts and one was an act of violence inflicted on a child. Three of the patients had severe symptoms including impairment of consciousness and respiratory distress. Other symptoms included metabolic acidosis, hypotension, leukocytosis, fever, mild elevation of hepatic tranaminase and creatinine, unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia, oral ulceration, pharyngolaryngitis, and chemical burns of the cornea (Lee et al., 1999). Mortality did not occur in any of the six cases. In general, toxic syndrome from Arsenal ingestion occurs at doses >100 mL. Effects include hypotension, pulmonary dysfunction, oral mucosal and gastrointestinal irritation, and transient liver and renal dysfunction (Lee et al., 1999).

This is very concerning. Cantox report was completed in 2007, yet, they could only find one human related study that was published in 1999. One has to wonder, if this product went through the US Food and Drug Administration, would it have received the green light to go the market? Probably not, so why did the EPA approve, while some countries banned it?

Considering there was very little to go on, Cantox had no other choice but use EPA as a source of information to complete the report. Canada’s Health department, Health Canada, expressed their concern for using EPA standards because what EPA considers “exposure estimates” were “not intended to represent the level of exposure in a population.” Yet, with the approval of EPA, Border Patrol was about to spray this toxic in a populated area as a pilot project. This is very reminiscent of the domestic human experiments our military conduct during the Cold War.

What caught my eye when I was researching this issue was a December 2008 press release by Forest Ethics.

Imazapyr is also used by [Sierra Pacific Industries] in their forestry practices. It has been shown to increase the number of brain and thyroid cancers in male rats and can be persistent in soil for up to a year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has gone on record stating that imazapyr is a threat to endangered species in 24 states east of the Mississippi River. SPI has used almost 31,000 pounds of this chemical in the state.

This is interesting because, according to the Laredo Morning Times, the US Fish and Wildlife Service was another government agency that would have allowed the Border Patrol commence with their plan to use imazapyr to eradicated the Carrizo Cane.

Although imazapyr may indeed have a very low level of toxicity, EPA’s regulatory oversight for potential health risks from exposures to hazardous chemicals needs to be re-examined. This is further compounded by the lack of transparency by the company that produces imazapyr. For three governmental agencies to remains defiant despite mounting evidence is put innocent people in harms way.

If Border Patrol seeks to eradicate the Carrizo cane there are clearly other humane methods Border Patrol could have used, such as manually cutting the cane. Not only is this humane but it also achieves one of President Obama’s goal, putting people back to work.

President Barack Obama said his administration will “represent a clean break from business as usual.” However, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is determined to go down the same road as her predecessor, Michael Chertoff, where her actions as justified as the end justifying any means, an attitude we have witnessed for the past 8 years.

While it has been delayed, but this is not good enough. The use of imazapyr in the United States must be stopped. There are many conflicting data on the effects of such widespread use of imazapyr. Most importantly, the citizens along the border should be not used as the governments Guinea pigs in the drug war.

The violence in Mexico that has spun out of control so quickly in 2008 has created a political reaction. It is hard to escape the bombardment of reports that has dominated our airwaves. From government and military officials to the talking heads, Mexico has been declared as a failed state, on the verge of civil war, and posing a threat to US national security.

Recently, President Obama weighed in on the issue saying that he was “not interested in militarizing the border.” However, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is singing a different tune. Her recent call for “more boots on the ground” along the border is currently taking place.

Not learning the harsh lessons from the past, Frontera NorteSur has just reported that Napolitano is unleashing a Vietnam tactic on the border. In the Vietnam War, the US sprayed vast tracts of land with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange as part of a counter-insurgency strategy aimed at removing forest cover for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces.

Because a giant bamboo-like weed known variously as Carrizo cane – scientifically as Arundo donax – has run rampant along portions of the Rio Grande between the US, the US Border Patrol and DHS are eager to find a way to kill it. The variety of Carrizo cane that is common in the Laredo-Del Rio borderlands grows as tall as 30 feet and provides convenient cover for undocumented border crossers and smugglers. On the US side, US Border Patrol plans to use the same Vietnam tactic to eradicate stands of the Carrizo cane.

The herbicide in question is imazapyr. Like all broad spectrum herbicides, imazapyr efficiently kills most plants with which it comes in contact, even those not intended as targets of the herbicide. However, as Jay J. Johnson Castro, Sr., executive director of the Rio Grande International Studies Center at Laredo Community College noted, “Nobody knows the impact of imazapyr.”

However, should the risk outweigh the benefits?

According to CropLife, herbicides are the most widely used type of pesticide and comprise around 50% of all crop protection chemicals used throughout the world. The pesticide industries dismiss the risks and assert that pesticides are regulated and therefore safe. However, there are significant problems with the registration process that do not ensure their safety.

One reason, the studies conducted on pesticide are proprietary or not peer-reviewed. Second, the extrapolations for human safety are from animal research. The animals used are usually rats and they have genes that do not exist in people for the detoxification of chemicals.

The risks and negative aspects associated with obsolete or wrongly managed pesticides should not be ignored. Imazapyr is said to have a low risk, but the general public may not always possess the information to enable them to make an objective judgment and they therefore often exhibit unfounded bias. What is known, A fact sheet prepared by the Washington State Department of Agriculture reports that imazapyr was highly mobile and persistent in soils.

Even though the Vietnam War has ended over 30 years ago, the effects of Agent Orange is still wreaking havoc on millions, including the newly born. Nobody knows when the congenital deformities, one of many horrific health consequences of the toxic chemicals, will end.

US dioxin expert Arnold Schecter found dioxin (Agent Orange) was never diluted by water and is chemically stable so it doesn’t easily decompose. As a result, it still exists, infiltrating the ecosystems and food chains in many parts of Vietnam. This is how the deadly chemical continues to claim its new prey — people who live off the land and water systems contaminated by it.

A report on imazapyr chemical’s history developed for the non-governmental group Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT) found that imazapyr can persists in soil, groundwater and surface water for over a year. Although imazapyr is a known corrosive that can irritate the eyes, skin and respiratory system, numerous epidemiological studies have identified herbicides as a potential risk factor for Parkinson’s disease.

If it is true, there is nothing to worry about, then why was Carlos Montiel Saeb, general manager for Nuevo Laredo’s water utility, told by Border Patrol to turn off their water pumps a few hours prior to spraying?

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would draw up plans for a DHS “surge” on the Mexico-US border to prepare for the possibility that Mexico’s drug war would “spill over” into the US. DHS’ new Secretary, Janet Napolitano, is showing signs she is determined to continue in the immigration crackdown launched by her predecessor Michael Chertoff without looking for humane alternatives.

The US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced on March 6 that it has completed an environmental assessment of the Carrizo cane and concluded that the introducing reed-killing wasps, Tetramesa romana, is the best of a handful of potential solutions.

While there appears to be a growing consensus in the US to assist Mexico in its efforts to combat the drug cartels, but NOT when the health risk outweigh the benefits.

Update: KeyRose at La Sanbe just posted that Pro8news just reported that the date for spraying will be delayed and that negotiations are underway because “our neighbors to the south have something to say.”

This is a minor and temporary victory. The news and local officials can downplay it and spin it all they want. The truth is, word spread fast and furious way in the blogosphere and we should pat ourselves on the back. However, we must stay vigilant and keep an eye on this.