Agent Orange, All Over Again

Washington, D.C. -- For seven months, the Environmental Protection Agency sat on a call to investigate the coca-defoliation program in Colombia. Presented by one of the agency's own internal boards, the letter asked for a study of harm to people and the environment posed by the U.S.-backed spraying of Roundup Ultra, a chemical critics compare to Agent Orange.

When the resolution was proposed at a December 10 meeting of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, "there was a lot of eye rolling and clearing of throats among the EPA members," said one government employee. No one from EPA "thought it had a snowball's chance in hell" of reaching administrator Christie Whitman's desk.

Those EPA members may seem jaded, but for a long while they also appeared to be right. President Bush has kept the agency hamstrung, forcing it to do an about-face on global warming and to relax water-quality standards. Now the president is seeking yet more funding for Plan Colombia, which is supposed to cut off the supply of cocaine on the streets of New York by halving the 300,000 acres of coca fields in Colombia over five years. The U.S. has pledged $1.3 billion in this fiscal year to support the $7.5 billion scheme with army anti-narcotics training and helicopters.

So far, the attack hasn't worked. Over 38,000 hectares have been sprayed since this year alone, but coca production is shifting to other parts of Colombia and spreading into Ecuador. The program has become the pretext for a Vietnam-style counterinsurgency in which U.S.-trained units of the Colombian army link up with paramilitary death squads in a bloody drive against guerrillas. U.S. Special Forces, who are doing the training, are kept out of the fighting, but U.S. civilian contractors who fly the spray planes have been reported in the thick of firefights.

Meanwhile, the peasantry are getting drenched with Roundup Ultra. In one EPA study published in 1993, California doctors reported that the herbicide's active ingredient, glyphosate, ranked third out of 25 chemicals that caused harm to humans. Some observers say the aircraft blitzing Colombian coca fields are flying at too great a height to ensure surrounding villages and farms are kept safe from the spray. Lower flights would court direct hits by rebel troops.

"Our concern is the longevity of the effects of the spraying: If the farmers can't plant, they can't grow or eat," said Alberto Saldamando, general counsel of the San Francisco-based International Indian Treaty Council, who drafted the resolution. "This is going to affect the whole agricultural economy. We think it's a very serious health-damaging case. We are talking about indigenous people. They are poor; they are not aware of what can happen to their health."

After being approved at the board meeting, the request for an investigation went to the agency's Office of Environmental Justice, a sort of clearing house and rewrite operation for advisory-group resolutions before they are sent up to the administrator. Sure enough, the letter disappeared amid complaints it was full of typographical errors.

It never reached the outgoing Clinton administrator, Carol Browner, and the issue was temporarily set aside as Bush took control of the White House. Next, the letter was kicked over to the Office of International Activities, where bureaucrats argued pro and con.

Eventually the resolution was sent back to the advisory board for its approval. There it sat. Peggy Shepard, executive director of the West Harlem Environmental Action and chair of the board, said Monday she only got the letter two weeks ago. She then cleaned it up and forwarded it to Whitman. "The letter was not withheld," she explained. "I simply did not sign it because I thought it was weak grammatically and lacking factually and needed to be fixed." As for Whitman's expected response, Shepard said, "We have no idea. We have not had any interaction with the administrator since she's been appointed."