Phil Boise's report on his meeting in Sacramento. Apparently much of his
background research was helped by the many responses gleaned here from SANET
based on my original post on measuring synthetics risk on golf courses. You
will note he also works with schools and muni govt. I sent the rest of the
memo on because it is so heroic.Thanks once again to the folks who responded.
Steve
Subj: FIVE AND DIME
Date: 98-12-07 11:28:02 EST
From: pboise@earthlink.net (Phil Boise)
Reply-to: pboise@earthlink.net
To: Sprinkraft@aol.com
Steve
It amazes me that information that should be commonly available in an
industry is not. The EPA does have guidelines for testing water
runnoff. Acute toxicity testing and Chronic toxicity testing. They both
use three species of animal invertebrate (ceriodaphnia, a water flea)
vertebrate (big head minnow) and algae. Acute testing puts any or all
of these organisms in contact with the sampled water for 96 hours, and
chronic exposes them to the sample for 11 days (I think). This may
serve well to determine cumulative impact on the bottom trophic levels
of an ecosystem, but, as one of the respondants to your query noted, It
won't tell us much about human interactions with these chemicals. I can
only hope that if the water flea dies, it will indicate that there is
potential human impact.
The difficulty in this has been to convince the regional water district
and the course developer that monthly testing is in order, for both
chronic and acute, with all three species quarterly. This was basically
my recommendation, which seems to me the very minimum, but which is far
beyond any industry standard, if there were one.
Like so many things, it seems crazy that these procedures aren't
established.
I had a busy week last week. Thursday I flew to Sacto for a mandatory
meeting for all applicants to a $100,000 grant from CDPR. The grant
supports work in risk reduction in an industry with statewide
representation. I have a really great, and kind of far fetched plan,
that would change the way pest management decisions were made in schools
(or parks, or maybe even farms), and I have everything lined up to apply
it to schools. I have the team, the mechanisms, everything, At the
meeting they said, basically "Even though we said schools were a
priority area for us in the paperwork, well, we funded a school program
last year, so we won't fund one this year". Man, was I pissed. I have
to form new alliances this week or give up on next years income. flew
back from sacto to lax, drove through the rain to the ranch, hiked home
by 10:30 pm, had to hike back out to dig my sister-in-laws car out of
the mud, went to bed, and both kids came down with the stomach flu.
Yuck. Had to pack sick kids in the car friday afternoon to make a meeting
at the escrow office for the sale of our business. ( Phil owns an organic
seed, feed, fertilizer, input, tools and nursery store in Santa Barbara). Went
to town
saturday and was elected to the BOD of the Ranch. ( Hollister Ranch-140
"owner" units on 14,000 acres above Santa Barbara on the coast) It's a pretty
big
job. Came home sat night, and Ellen and I came down with the stomach
flu . Yuck. Sunday nite got the word that the buyers of the store sent
the escrow contract to their lawyer, and he has opened up all kinds of
new negotiations, that need to be resolved by tomorrow morning. I may
have to find a lawyer today, although I can't leave the store.
Oh well, we all go through it, don't we? This will be a fun week.
Adios steve, thanks again for all that info, I'll send you my revolutionary
idea soon.
pb
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