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PS. Extra-Local Actions: Hawaii. 2023

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After the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, the state spent $1 billion in cleanup and land remediation for one year. It developed a standard for post-wildfire recovery program occuring in phases. Phase 1 is household hazardous waste removal with removal of visible waste like bulk asbestos. Chemical contamination in the soil is addressed later. Phase 2 is Debris Removal includes site assessment, documentation, asbestos assessment and removal, debris removal, hazardous tree removal, soil testing and contamination removal, and erosion control. California's Governor Newsom deployed 101 state and local government personnel for Hawaii. Survivors of the Camp Fire have also offered emotional and practical advice to Lahaina survivor. 

Sources:
https://calrecycle.ca.gov/disaster/wildfires/
https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2023-08-15/survivors-of-ca…

PS. Hazards in Hawaii. 2023

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August 2023 Update:

 

October 2023 Update:
Hazardous Waste after the Lahain fires: After the Lahaina fires, chemical pollutants in the air and water present a hazardous health issue. Chemicals include benzene, polcyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, lead, asbestos. Half the buildings in Lahaina predated the 1978 federal health ban. Symptoms from this chemical exposure can include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite. Apart form these predictable materials, the debris contains combustion by-products of a unique construction material--caneck, made from sugarcane fibers and treated with arsenic as a termite repellant. 

Sources:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/maui-residents-face-lingering-toxic…
https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/08/toxic-debris-from-the-lahaina-fire-wi…

PS. Stakeholder Actions: Hawaii. 2023

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State power in Hawaii: The state of Hawaii was the first state in the US to declare climate emergency. They have a pretty extensive climate change portal. The state is also reported as enacting many progressive legislations, such as banning some sunscreens to protect coral reefs, raise the smoking age, commited to goals in Paris climate deal. It also aims to be dependent 100% on renewable energy by 2045. The state has also banned chlorpyrifos, a chemical that in other parts of the US is resulting into multiple disabilities for agricultural populations. 

According to the maunakeasyllabus, however, the state of Hawaii participates in production of Hawaiin culture as a resource that undermines self-determination. In their words: 

“For the state, the work entails producing Hawaiian culture as a resource that can be managed in the first place. (Yúdice 2004: 4). Culture-as-resource works in tandem with public trust jurisprudence to make feasible the settler state’s governance of the differences of Indigenous communities and the pasts that produce it… What is expedient about this rendering of Hawaiian culture is that the state can protect it, usually under a management plan, thereby safeguarding the resource-glue that presumably coheres Hawaiian community; and thus allows the settler state to conclude that it protects Hawaiian culture without having to address Hawaiian self-determination.”

PS. Hawaii Community Assets. 2023

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PS EcoGovLab skills mapping activity Spring 2023

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I see immense skill in being able to conceptualize and envision a paradigm for research to translate knowledge-to-action. If one of our goals is expanding notions of what counts as data and expertise, we have members especially skilled in different ways of knowing, in different methodological styles, and in different content and thematic expertise. For e.g. just going by who is in the room today: we have skills in educating (whether to family members or to K-12 schools or university students); in designing curriculum across different environments; in collaborating with different kinds of knowledge partners (NGOs, government agencies, schools); in negotiating interpersonal relationships; in memorialization and archiving practices; and various technical skills.

PS: SJV pesticides: intersecting injustices

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1. data injustice: the Cerda family did not have access to the data linking chlorpyrifos as a neurotoxin. 

2. economic injustice: the Cerda family are agricultural workers and are exposed to pesticides like chlorpyrifos on a regular basis. Rafael Cerda's developmental disabilities will present barriers in economic and overall well-being. 

3. epistemic injustice: Cerda family's complaints and allegations are not being considered by the pesticide manufacturers and sprayers 

4. health injustice: Rafael Cerda's disabilities are a direct result of his in-utero and natal chlorpyrifos exposure 

5. intergenerational injustice: Rafael Cerda's disabilities were caused in-utero as his mother was exposed to large amounts while she was pregnant with him. 

6. media injustice: inadequate attention to the extent of harm this pesticide can cause

7. procedural injustice: ongoing lawsuit, result not yet known

8. racial injustice: the affected are Latino/a agricultural workers 

9. reproductive injustice: exposure to Chlropyrifos in-utero

PS: SJV pesticides: stakeholder actions

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1. Scientists at Columbia university estbalished a link between exposure to chlorpyrifos and alterations in brain structure

2. California Gov. Gavin Newsom banned chlorpyrifos in the state in may 2019

3. EPA banned the chemical in 2015. Trump admin reversed the ban. 

4. Cerda family: chronic exposure to chlorpyrifos, suing for general damages, compensatory damages due to Cerda’s loss in earning capacity, medical costs, and “punitive damages for the willful, reckless, and recklessly indifferent conduct of the Defendants,” 

PS: SJV pesticide disability: stakeholders

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1. Seventeen-year-old Avenal resident Rafael Cerda Calderon: platiniff, impacted heavily by the pesticide Chlorpyrifos 

2. Corteva, Inc.: multi-billion dollar agribusiness company; 

3. pesticide applicators Woolf Farming Co. and Cottonwest, LLC

4. municipalities of Huron and Avenal

5. pesticide applicators Woolf Farming Co. and Cottonwest, LLC

6. attorney groups: Calwell Luce diTrapano PLLC of Charleston, West Virginia, and Bonnett, Fairbourn, Friedman & Balint P.C. of San Diego, and Phoenix.

PS: SJV pesticide disability: compounding vulnerabilities

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1. The agricultural region's dependence on the pesticide Chlorpyrifos to "control insects that can attack almond orchards, cotton fields, and apricot trees, among other popular crops". 

2. Deadly and insidous nature of the chemical: its effects are similar to sarin gas and "it gets everywhere... for a child living there, with every breath he takes, he’s getting a little dose. It’s very insidious"

3. Lack of protection for farmworkers: "His mother, Alba Luz Calderon de Cerda, handled citrus fruits and lettuce sprayed with chlorpyrifos as a packing house worker during her pregnancy. His father, Rafael Cerda Martinez, was a pesticide sprayer in agricultural fields, who often brought the chemical home, the lawsuit alleges.. The child and his parents were also exposed to the chemicals through the air in their home, the fields and packing houses where they worked, as well as in the water they drank, which was “loaded with chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos oxon,” according to the lawsuit."

PS: SJV pesticide disability: hazards

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17-year old Avenal resident Rafael Cerda Calderon suffers from severe seizures, autism, and a developmental disability. He was exposed in-utero and during infancy to the pesticide Chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxin that has been compared to Sarin for the health hazard that it imposes. The pesticide was developed by Dow Chemicals, now Delware-based Corteva Inc., in the 1960s as a substitute for DDT, and has been banned for nationwide use since 2001. 

"the pesticide becomes a deadly neurotoxin when it comes into contact with water or sunshine or treated with chlorine, which is typically added to tap water. Chlorpyrifos oxon is 1,000 times more toxic than the original pesticide and was never registered with the EPA because it is so deadly."

“We found the stuff in cars; it gets in the dashboard, it goes anywhere the wind goes,” Calwell said. “We even sampled a teddy bear and even found it there. So for a child living there, with every breath he takes, he’s getting a little dose. It’s very insidious.”