But residents in Lincoln County, Oregon, are fighting to rise about preemptive restrictions.
This article by John Abbots and Eric de Place was published by the Sightline Institute on March 12, 2019.
Local communities can often see connections between pollution and environmental health long before big government agencies respond.
That’s what happened on the Oregon Coast in 2017 when a small group of citizens banded together to pass a ballot measure that would ban aerial pesticide spraying. It all started when a small group of citizens in Lincoln County grew concerned after watching planes and helicopters douse the forests around their community with a cocktail of chemical pesticides and fungicides. Worried about the potential impacts of spray drifting into their water supplies and affecting the health of people and animals, they started a campaign to ban the practice. They noted that the US Forest Service already banned the practice over national forests in 1984—and yet timber companies continued to apply chemicals from aircraft onto private forest land in Lincoln County and other parts of the Northwest.
In spite of bitter opposition by chemical industry groups that spent nearly $34 per voter (at least 22 times as much as the measure’s backers), the measure passed by a razor-thin margin of 61 votes out of nearly 14,000 ballots cast. It was a victory against long odds and a temporary one. Two private landowners subsequently filed suit against the measure, claiming that Oregon state law preempts the local initiative.
Lincoln County’s effort to set its own environmental rules is a case study in an under-reported battle raging in the Northwest and across the country. Many cities, towns, and counties want to set more stringent pesticide laws, so the industry has a keen interest in keeping that decision-making power limited to state and federal government, where it holds more influence over lawmakers.
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