The Story of Bill 2491 – Chapter 1 – It all started in a living room
10 years ago on June 26, 2013 at a regular meeting of the Kauaʻi County Council, Bill 2491 was introduced and passed first reading. Actually, it was anything but a “regular” meeting (IYKYK).
The Story of Bill 2491 – Chapter 1 – It all started in a living room
It all started as a living room conversation with a handful of 20 – 30 year old millennials. I had no idea at the time that this conversation would lead to others, and those conversations would further evolve and grow, culminating in an epic battle between my tiny island home of Kauaʻi Hawaiʻi, and 4 of the largest chemical companies in the world.
Sol Kahn and Fern Holland where the two who initially reached out.
“Uncle Gary, we need your help,” was their message. And, as a family friend and newly elected member of the Kauaʻi County Council, my natural response was of course “I’m not exactly sure what I can do, but put a small group together and let’s meet up soon and talk.”
Needless to say, on November 20, 2012 at 6pm, I met with Sol, Fern and a small group of their friends, perhaps 5 people max. Born and raised Kauaʻi kids to me, but young adults really. I few I knew somewhat, and others I had never met. By day they were surfers, fishermen and scuba divers, and by night they mostly worked in the hospitality industry as wait help, bussing tables, and tending bar – each of them concerned about their community and wanting to do something.
Sol’s parents Carole and Marti Kahn were longtime friends. I remember Marti sending me a note with a link to a documentary film on the issue of GMO’s that Sol had sent him. Marti encouraged me watch the video and talk with Sol.
So I did. Little did I know at the time watching that short film and meeting with that small group would be the catalyst for a major movement.
Their message to me was succinct and direct. “Uncle, we need your help. These GMO companies have taken over our island, they dominate the west side and now are expanding their fields to the south and to the east. Soon they will be crossing the river to the north as well. People are getting sick. We know folks on the west side who are going door-to-door counting the neighbors who have cancer, asthma, and other health problems. Uncle, you have to do something.”
I listened intently to their earnest pleas for help. This small group of young adults, sitting in a softly lit living room tucked away in the hills of Wailua Homesteads. Most were about the same age as my own children. I knew their parents. I’d watched them grow up, play soccer, and hang out together growing up on this beautiful and special island we all called home.
The seeds of responsibility and a deep obligation to not let them down were planted deep inside me that evening. They were counting on me, and I had to come through for them. There really was no other option.
So, like a good politician and also a good uncle, I did my best to manage their expectations without killing their hope.
At the end of the evening discussion, prior to heading home I said to them, “I’m only a Councilman. Even if I thought it was the right thing to do, I do not have the power or legal authority to kick these companies off our island. I could possibly introduce and maybe pass a county ordinance that might make their operations safer or something, but even then I am only 1 of 7 on the council and it will take at least 4 to pass anything. I’m not sure what I can do, but let me look into it and see what’s going on.”
And so it began, an epic battle between the 4 of the largest chemical companies in the world against literally a handful of young people concerned about the health of their community
I don’t use the word epic, lightly.
Kauaʻi County, a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a resident population of only 68,000 people was considered “ground zero” by GMO activists around the world. While we did not know it at the time of these first conversations, we soon discovered that more highly toxic Restricted Use Pesticides (RUP) were being used, and more experimental GMO crops were being grown on our island than anywhere else in the United States.
No local county government had ever successfully challenged this industry in communities where the companies were already established, doing their toxic business and employing hundreds of people.
But we set out that day to do exactly that.
And it all started at 6pm on November 20th, 2012 as a conversation in a Wailua Homesteads living room.
To be absolutely clear, if Sol and Fern hadn’t asked for the meeting, and if the other young people there that night had not taken the time to attend and to speak out – Bill 2491 and the epic battle that followed might never have happened.
But they did, and thus the story of Bill 2491 and “the little island that could” begins.
Two weeks prior, I had won election to the Kauaʻi County Council. During the preceding year, while campaigning around the island, the refrain was constant and uniform, “Gary, we have to do something, this GMO thing is out of control.”
The message during those 8 months of island wide campaigning was consistent and came from all sectors of our community. This was not just my usual hippie, environmentalist, white, north shore friends. Little old ladies would pull me aside in the supermarket to express their concerns. Young parents at the park, Rotary Club friends, conservatives and liberals alike, would send me emails, texts, and leave voice mail messages on my phone – “Gary, we have to do something…”.
Gradually, then not so gradually, as I drove around the island, going door to door, attending events, putting up campaign signs – “the penny dropped”.
The corn was everywhere. The GMO corn, grown by the chemical companies was pervasive, covering what seemed to be every square inch of agricultural land on at least half of the island. There was corn along the highway by the airport, in fields directly across from Kukui Grove Shopping Center, surrounding Kauaʻi Community College and Island School. And that was only in the town of Lihue.
On the Southside the corn was planted near the Maha’ulepu coastline and mile after mile along the highway headed west, everywhere you looked on both sides of the highway was corn.
Once you passed Hanapepe Town, you really understood what it meant when they said Kauaʻi was “ground zero” for the GMO industry. From the mountains “mauka” to the ocean “makai” – everywhere there was corn. All the way until the end of the road at Polihale State Beach Park, there was nothing but corn.
GMO corn, experimental corn, corn grown for ethanol, for high fructose corn syrup, and for cattle feed. Corn grown to be shipped out in boxes labeled “unfit for human consumption”. Corn grown utilizing special federal permits that stated “not approved for release into the environment.”
Everywhere there was corn, grown year round, the continental U.S. equivalent of 3 growing seasons, using 3 times the amount of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides that a normal Iowa corn farm might use. What’s the saying? Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink. That’s how it felt. This massive amount of agriculture that was anything but food.
There was corn, corn, everywhere but yet not a kernel to really eat. This was industrial GMO agriculture designed by and for chemical companies so they could make more money selling more chemicals.
Yes, the penny dropped indeed. People around the island were concerned. Residents on the west side especially sensed a general increase in health issues. There seemed to be more people dealing with cancer, more neighbors and more children having respiratory issues.
In the evenings, when the fields were often sprayed, people complained of the smell, and sometimes of even a faint but foul taste of chemical. Families began shutting their windows in the evening to escape the unnatural odor and the ever-present red dirt that blew in from the fields.
At the Waimea Canyon Middle School, there were times when the kids would get sick and have to be taken to the nearby hospital. The companies denied of course it was the spraying of toxic pesticides in the adjacent fields that caused the trauma. Syngenta itself conveniently led the investigation concluding an innocuous “stink weed” was to blame.
Then, a west side resident told me about the lawsuit. 150 local residents in the town of Waimea a community of only 1,700 people total had filed charges against Dupont/Pioneer, the largest employer in the community for contaminating their homes with dust and pesticide drift. Led by long time resident Klayton Kubo, the message was loud and clear. The people of Waimea were literally sick and so very tired of the abuse blowing down upon them from the nearby GMO test fields.
This was the final straw for me that pushed the issue over the top. Waimea was a plantation town, its residents were either former sugar plantation workers or descendants of those plantation workers. Dupont/Pioneer was the new plantation and for plantation workers to sue the plantation – was unheard of.
So when I met with Sol Kahn, Fern Holland and the others that evening of November 20, 2012 – I knew in my heart they were right to be concerned and that yes, as their Council member and as their uncle, I must indeed do something and to be successful it must be we, all of us together focused on making it happen.
Fortunately, this was not my first rodeo. In retrospect, my previous 13 years of experience serving first on the Kauaʻi Council, then in the Hawaiʻi Senate as Majority Leader, plus working for Governor Abercrombie as State Director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control – had prepared me well for the task at hand.
My previous experience had taught me that men in suits, high-paid lawyers, and industry executives were to be challenged, not feared or bowed down to. I’d learned the importance of doing my homework, of choosing my words carefully, and to never accept the words of industry (or the lawyers) at face value. I understood the basics of law-making, of bill drafting, and of the importance of having community support and the facts solidly on your side. Most of all I knew how to count votes, and I knew not to push the vote until the votes were there. I might not have had a law degree, but I was thoroughly schooled in the area of politics and policy at both the State and County level.
When I left Sol’s house that night and headed to my own home just a few miles down the road, I was both exhausted and pumped. I remember speaking with my wife Claudette about that conversation and those young people who called me uncle. I remember discussing with her my obligation to follow through on “seeing what I could do to help”. I also remember sleeping very little that night, tossing and turning as my mind raced down various paths, plans, and strategies of “next steps”.
I awoke in the morning knowing the first order of business was to do my homework. Who were these companies? What exactly were they doing in my community? What were they growing? What chemicals were they using?
Thus began my journey down the path of Bill 2491. It started with a living room conversation, and transitioned rapidly to homework and basic research. After numerous additional living room conversations with that initial group, and with many others young and old, from all corners of our island – and around the globe actually, 8 months later on June 26, 2013, Bill 2491 was formally introduced.
I had no idea at the time how challenging, how tumultuous, how important, and how life-changing the experience of the coming months would be for me and so many others.
This is mostly a Kauaʻi story, though similar battles were occurring on Maui, on Hawaiʻi Island, and across the planet.
And this is my story, seen through my eyes. There are many similar yet different stories to be told by the many others who likewise played critical roles in our common quest to make our community safer, and the epic battle that followed.
Read on and soon you will understand why I use that word so often.
*Stay tuned for Chapter 2 which I will post during the first week of July!
Note to readers: The above represents an initial draft of the first Chapter of my very first book that is a “work in progress” 😉 During the coming weeks and months I will be writing and rewriting and adding subsequent chapters. While I enjoy writing “commentary” and blogging…I’ve never written a book before. So hang in there and put up with my errors, constant corrections and rewrites. Please let me know if you have suggestions, corrections or edits you might also suggest.
To be clear, there are many stories to be told through the eyes of many who were involved in Bill 2491. This story is just one of them.
For those interested in digging deep into the topic and the historical roots of the movement, I encourage you to read Andrea Noelani Brower’s book “Seeds of occupation, seeds of possibility” The Agrochemical-GMO Industry in Hawaiʻi – available at West Virginia University Press BROWERSEED30 is the 30% discount code!
Take the time also to watch “Poisoning Paradise” Produced by Pierce Brosnan and his wife Keely Brosnan, and directed by Teresa Tico. Available Free on Amazon Prime!
And when you get a moment read BREAKFAST AT MONSANTO’S: Is Roundup in our food making us fatter, sicker, and sadder? by Kauaʻi resident Dr. Lee Evslin.