Auckland’s Mayor, Phil Goff, and all Auckland councillors should be sued in the High Court for the criminal neglect of the health and safety of their citizens say anti-glyphosate campaigners.
Already, many cities, counties, states and countries have banned or restricted the use of Roundup and other chemical weed control products which contain glyphosate.
Some of the most dedicated and well-informed local activists, like Hana Blackmore and her Weed Advisory Group and the Weed Free Streets Group, have been informing the council for years of the dangers of chemical vegetation control on our street berms and in our parks and reserves. Their submissions have become increasingly urgent, but council continues to ignore them. More recently, this columnist from the Ponsonby News has witnessed first hand the offhand way councillors appear to listen but then repeatedly ignore, increasingly urgent requests to stop dangerous spraying.
However, it has now gone beyond ignore. The Auckland Council is being accused of being guilty of a number of criminal offences against its own residents and ratepayers.
I have discussed this problem with a number of interested people, and there is general agreement that there may be legal grounds for suing councillors for their sins and omissions.
That is certainly a seriously disappointing conclusion to reach, but councillors have brought it on themselves.
First of all, the council is refusing to implement its own 2013 Weed Control Policy, or at the very least, Auckland Transport is. A hugely emerging Auckland problem is AT's refusal to be a “Council Controlled Organisation.”
As I have previously said a number of times, even if the problem is a refusal of AT to be controlled by its so-called boss, Auckland Council, that still does not let councillors off the hook. They must act lawfully with reference to their own enactments, including the 2013 Weed Control Policy.
The council’s recalcitrance is helping to fuel nasty rumours about councillors’ inaction.
There are serious allegations floating around - possible lies have been told by council officers, possible lacing of bio-safe chemical sprays with carcinogenic glyphosate, unreasonably inflated alternative costs promulgated by officers as alternatives to poisons, for example for steam, ‘best practice’ which is designed as an integral part of the Weed Policy being ignored, even conspiracy to conceal the truth (as opposed to outright lying). The role of Mayor Phil Goff and that of his predecessor, Len Brown, needs questioning in this context.
Ponsonby News has discovered that the Auckland District Health Board has had 208 calls since 2010, specifically about health episodes because of glyphosate injestion. Glyphosate could be a factor in other complaints not counted in that 208 figure. The board maintains it has no figures on hospital admission numbers because of glyphosate poisoning.
So, hundreds of Aucklanders, many of them children, get sick when council sprays around their homes. They also spray around their school during school holidays.
The utterly compromised Environmental Protection Authority will not shield Auckland councillors from the law. The EPA is now an outlier on the health and safety of New Zealanders who are forced to injest glyphosate, and the sooner council comes to understand that the better.
The only way left for Auckland Council is to ban any chemical products that contain glyphosate, and avoid the threat of a High Court action against them.
Hot off the press - a new bombshell
As this article was being prepared for publication, a report of a Canterbury University study was released. The study led by UC Molecular Biology and Genetics Professor Jack Heineman has found that common herbicides including glyphosate in Roundup, cause antibiotic resistance. They cause bacteria to become less susceptible to antibiotics. The growth of superbugs resistant to antibiotics is a worldwide health risk.
This University of Canterbury research is the first in the world to demonstrate that herbicides like glyphosate may be undermining the use of a fundamental medicine-antibiotics.
With expertise in genetic engineering, bacterial genetics and biosafety, Professor Heineman has some recommendations: “The sub-lethal effects of industrially manufactured chemical products should be considered by regulators when deciding whether the products are safe for their intended use,” he says.
The ‘sub-lethal effects’ means any implications for health, short of death, which manufacturers don’t consider.
That should be the final nail in the glyphosate coffin, or if council continues to ignore the evidence, it should be the beginning of a very important local court case, charging Auckland councillors with endangering the health and well being of its citizens, and ignoring international and now important local evidence about the dangers of the carcinogenic glyphosate. (JOHN ELLIOTT)