Blunderbuss approach

So we are off to the races again on Klukwan Inc.'s test case for helicopter pesticide spraying on Long Island near Prince of Wales Island. An instant coalition of tribal, fishing, community, health care and conservation groups halted this project last summer, but it has risen again, and has added two more combinations of chemicals to the toxic brew that will drift down on berry pickers, hunters, fishermen and fish waters, unless the public outcry works again to stop this regressive mode of forest management.

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This is a test case in many respects. It has the potential of setting precedent, as first permittee, for use of new state regulations for a statewide program of such spraying. It is also a test case for the people and other living things in the intensively used subsistence zone that will be subject to the spraying. For all these living things, this will be an involuntary laboratory test for new concoctions and mixes of toxic chemicals - which have never been tested in these combinations and conditions before. This is very risky business, for people, especially the very young and elderly, and for the other living things, especially for salmon spawning and rearing populations. Not to mention the black eye that drifting spray would give to our pure and wild salmon fishery. That would taint the whole idea of "pure and wild." And once traces of these chemicals were found in our salmon, along with lesions and other signs of the poisons' work, the resulting stink and aversion would rival the international water "holes" where cruise ships used to dump their sewage.

When will we begin to learn that integrated approaches, taking account of all eco-factors, are the only way to go when dealing with such lethal matters? This spraying program is a clumsy way to regenerate a spruce forest, just for starters. When the potential byproducts of this poisonous blunderbuss of a program are added to the mix, it doesn't make any sense at all.

William E. Brown

Gustavus