The state uses a common herbicide as part of its weed abatement program. One Malibu resident questions the use of a toxin, while the city strives to clean up its polluted watershed.
By Olivia Damavandi / Assistant Editor
While the City of Malibu spends millions of dollars battling lawsuits over water pollution and implementing laws to clean up the environment, one Malibu resident questions why bother when the state sends trucks spewing toxins down the city’s highway and roads. However, a city official says other means to remove weeds, such as hand-pulling them, would be too costly to avoid a health risk that is considered to be low.
Malibu resident Mike Gardner, a Realtor, called The Malibu Times on Monday and described a Caltrans worker in a truck spraying a huge stream of herbicide along Pacific Coast Highway. Caltrans conducts its weed abatement along the highway with the use of a common herbicide that, according to some studies, has shown evidence of causing environmental and health problems.
“We live in a city where people are so aware of what’s going into the water and they’re concerned about clean water,” Gardner said Tuesday in a phone interview. “If city officials are going to rant and rave about clean water, they should budget the money to manually remove the weeds or at least investigate the possibility of doing so. If the city’s going to strive for clean water, they should lead by example.”
Caltrans Public Information Officer Judy Gish said Tuesday that the state agency uses the “low toxicity” herbicide for weed abatement along the highway because “Caltrans does not have the resources to hand-pull weeds and also needs to minimize the exposure of workers to fast-moving traffic on this highway.”
Gish said the herbicide cannot be used in Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas such as Topanga Canyon, because of its propensity to contaminate nearby watersheds.
But Gardner said that the herbicide sprayed along the highway near Bluffs Park on Monday was possibly swept into nearby Malibu Lagoon, also an ESHA, by rain that day and on Tuesday.
Malibu Mayor Jefferson Wagner agreed that the herbicide “may become a pollutant,” but, echoing Gish’s statement, he added, “There is a smaller risk on PCH to pollute because it’s not an ESHA.
“I’m taking a practical, common sense approach to this,” Wagner continued “Would they [residents] rather have us hire people at $15 to $20 an hour? Would they pay Caltrans through tax resources to hand-pull weeds? At what point does economics come into it? I’m not defending the use of [herbicides], I’m only trying to promote a practical way to demote the five to 10 feet of flammable area right next to the highway. At what point do you say stop this and let it become a fire hazard?”
Heal the Bay President Mark Gold on Tuesday said he was unaware that Caltrans was using an herbicide as a weed abatement technique.
“If Caltrans is using herbicides indiscriminately on PCH, then that’s a practice that needs to stop, especially near waterways like Malibu Creek and lagoon, Solstice Creek, Zuma Creek and Trancas Creek,” Gold said.
The major source of glyphosate in drinking water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, is runoff from herbicide use. Herbicides containing glyphosate are also used on food crops.
The EPA states that some people who ingest glyphosate beyond maximum contaminant levels (700 parts per billion) for many years could experience kidney or reproductive problems. Weighted studies by the state Office of Environmental Hazard Assessment, found that the chemical does not pose cancer risks to humans.
A study published in Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis (vol. 31 pp. 55-59, 1998) found that in California, where pesticide-related illness must be reported, glyphosate was the third most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among agricultural workers, and the most common cause of pesticide illness in landscape workers.
Other scientific studies have shown that herbicides are toxic to earthworms, beneficial insects, birds and mammals by destroying the vegetation on which they depend for food and shelter, though some of this vegetation may be nonnative or invasive.
But some, including Malibu Mayor Jefferson Wagner, say that the herbicide the state uses is not as harmful as it is sometimes portrayed to be.
Wagner on Tuesday said the city has no jurisdiction over the way Caltrans conducts its weed abatement practices, and also said the herbicide used by Caltrans is a State Park-approved substance (trucks spraying herbicide on parkland alongside Malibu Canyon Road are commonly seen).
He explained that companies that own utility poles also use herbicides as a two-part weed abatement process, after they mechanically cut the weeds.
“The utility companies take care of the 10-foot radius around the utility poles and then Caltrans maintains about a six- to 10-foot-wide clearance from the curb in those more rural areas,” Wagner explained.
“It’s important for people to understand that [herbicide] is not the ultimate best thing to use but it has to be used on invasive plants because you can’t hand-pull large castor bean plants or Arundo, it’s thick and dense. You have to kill it down to the roots. So I have no problem using [herbicide] on invasive, nonnative plants.”