Lobbying Forces Locke Staff To Drop Fertilizer Proposal Right-To-Know Provision Lauded As ‘National Model’

Bowing to heavy industry lobbying, Washington Gov. Gary Locke’s staff members have agreed to kill a consumer right-to-know provision in what had been touted as a national model fertilizer law.

The latest proposal, set for a vote in state Senate and House committees today, would tell farmers and gardeners absolutely nothing new about the unadvertised contents of fertilizers.

Instead, every licensed fertilizer, whether high or low in the recently disclosed “tagalong toxics,” would contain an identical statement saying the product passed Washington standards for nine heavy metals.

Consumers could find out about the standards from the store - but not about the actual toxic contents such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and dioxins.

Environmental, health and farmworker activists said the change would turn the fertilizer-reform law upside down, legalizing an unsafe practice and misleading consumers.

They didn’t like Locke’s plan before. Now they like it a lot less.

“This regulation would infer that the fertilizers are safe when indeed their safety on food crops is not known,” Jude Van Buren, an environmental-health scientist and professor at The Evergreen State College, said in written testimony to a Senate committee Tuesday night.

Washington would still be the first state to adopt standards for heavy metals in fertilizer, effective July 1, 1999. But it would trail behind at least two other states, California and Georgia, in labeling fertilizers.

The Sierra Club, Washington Environmental Council, Washington Public Interest Research Group, League of Women Voters and more than 40 smaller groups submitted a statement Tuesday night asking for stronger action, including a ban on the most harmful industrial wastes in fertilizer and a detailed label.

“Our position is the same,” said Laurie Valeriano of the Washington Toxics Coalition. “They caved in to special interests.”

Carol Jolly, a senior policy analyst for Locke, said the compromise with industry was the only “pragmatic” way to get any new fertilizer law passed by the Republican-conrolled Legislature.

Jolly and other state officials who have been studying toxics in fertilizers for six months attended seven hours of closed-door meetings Saturday and Monday with industry representatives and the chairmen of the agriculture committees.

“We spent most of the time at all of these meetings talking about labeling,” said Greg Sorlie, Department of Ecology hazardous waste and toxic-reduction-program manager.

State Rep. Kelli Linville, a Democrat, attended one of the industry meetings and said most consumers just want to know if the product is safe.

“What we’re doing is taking a first step,” Linville said after co-sponsoring the industry-backed bill.

Jolly said it was a major effort to get fertilizer interests to accept a proposed $300,000 study on cancer-linked dioxins in fertilizer, in addition to a $400,000 study on heavy metals that was already in the bill.

“They didn’t like it,” Jolly said. “The key thing was convincing them it was in their best interests.”

Jolly said the governor will seek money and technical assistance for the studies from the federal government and fertilizer industry. The dioxin study would be due Nov. 1, the metals study Dec. 31, 2000.

By Tuesday, Jolly was limping around the Capitol with a sore back she attributed to stress over the fertilizer debate.

But she insisted in an open-door meeting with environmentalists and in Senate committee testimony that the bill was a good first step in an area that hadn’t been regulated at all, not in any state.

“There’s no saying we aren’t going to want to strengthen this and get more information to the public in the future,” Jolly said.

Washington would be the first state to adopt standards for heavy metals in fertilizers. Many other states are watching the work here, sparked by a Seattle Times investigation published last July.

The newspaper reported heavy industries are saving millions of dollars by recycling wastes laced with toxic metals into fertilizer, often without informing farmers, and without proof the practice is safe.

Jolly said consumers here would be able to learn more about the contents of fertilizers after the state publishes a report on testing results. Under the proposed new law, the reports would be issued every two years, starting Dec. 1, 1999.