1080 Pellets Are Poisoning & Killing All Life in New Zealand

Video Transcript:

The property owners near the mountain valley pipeline and grassy meadows are speaking out after a foreign pelletant substance was dumped on their property. Our Haley Brown explains what this means for these organic farmers livelihoods and this is a story you'll only see on WVVA. A pelleted substance rains down on a farmer and his children while harvesting ginseng on their property near grassy meadows. And a helicopter flew over and about 10 seconds after it flew over pellets started to come out and drop through, pelting myself, my children. According to an EPA spill report, the pellets are an earth guard, a product to prevent erosion and provide soil stabilization. The Laferia farm, Blackberry Botanicals, is adjacent to a path cleared for the pipeline. The pellets fell over a quarter of a mile away from the pipeline path. The EPA's bill report says pellets were dumped two more times, covering nearly three fourths of the farmland. The injuries of the children will heal, but damage to the farm remains long after. And I asked specifically of the environmental specialist, is there anything that we can do to clean this up? And he said no, there's absolutely nothing you can do to clean it up. The Laferia say substances in the pellets aren't organic and could void their farm's organic certification, diminishing their livelihood. Non-organic Black Cahosh is $5.00 of pound. Organic is $38. And it just feels like we've been steamrolled abuse, like they just don't care. Here for you in Summers County, I'm Haley Brown, WVVA News. WVVA reached out to Mountain Valley Pipeline for Comment and so far we've received no response. In August and September 2015 Auckland Council airily spread ten-odd poison across 21,000 hectares of the Hunua Forest Park. Enough poison was dropped across the Hunua Ranges to kill over 380,000 people. Prior to the drop taking place, were you informed about taking water or not taking water or whether to disconnect your water supplies? I was told that the drop wouldn't be anywhere near our waterways, rivers, streams and water coming into the property or anything. So I was told that it would drop well clear of the waterways. The operational toxin flight chart obtained under the official information aid shows that 1080 poison was dropped directly into all streams flowing into the dams and into streams flowing out of the operational area. Small buffers were in place around the dams themselves. The poison has dropped to kill rats, possums, pigs and deer. The poison pigs, deer and possums that die in and near streams can cause delayed contamination and increased levels of E. coli as they decompose. Regional Council's issue the resource concerns that permit the discharge of poison bait directly into waterways. Waikato Regional Council is currently in the process of issuing a consented dock, TB-free and Waikato Regional Council that will allow them to continue to airily spread 1080 poison across forests and streams for another 35 years. The users of 1080 poison often claim that after testing, the water samples come back clear most of the time. However in most cases, the testing process isn't following land-key research as best practice guidelines, which state. Most samples taken within eight hours of bait application are expected to provide the greatest likelihood of detecting any residual 1080. Most samples taken for testing by agencies are collected 24 hours or more after the aerium drop and after the poison has already been uptaken by a Qwata Clive in plants will pass through the water column and diluted into larger water bodies like the Hunua dams. The flight charts of recent drops on the Coromandel Peninsula, Mount Peroni and Neohamilter and around the towering of Taupe and Waimarino rivers near Taupe. All showed the poison was dropped directly into waterways within the drop boundaries at the same rate as the land areas around them. In most cases, people living near the drop boundaries are not informed that the water they are drawing from the operational area has had 1080 poison dropped directly into it or that they are entitled to mitigation. The water sample results don't prove the absence of 1080. They demonstrate poor testing protocols, methodology and processes and more can add a quick testing equipment. Centre of the Auckland City's drinking water. We're aware that it can be an indoor current disruptor at Patspur Trillion and the water can be tested at Patspur Billion. So, in which the research to say that it doesn't affect us, it doesn't hurt us, it doesn't have any impact on our health. I'd like to know where that research is, we're worried. People claim that 1080 has been studied to death. Well, it's absolutely not true. It hasn't been studied to death. It's been very well studied in certain areas of its toxicology. But it's been very poorly studied in other areas and some of these other areas are really important and one of those is hormone disruption. We know that hormone disruptors can be effective in parts per trillion, way even below parts per billion. And one part per trillion would be the same as if you're making a gin and tonic, it'd be one drop of gin and you'd have to then have 660 milk tankers full of tonic to dilute it to one part per trillion. And parts per trillion are enough to disrupt hormone systems. It would take 10,000 lakes the size of taubeau to dilute the annual drop of 1080 into New Zealand's forest to four parts per trillion. So, we're at the cancer causing or cast into just genicity studies. There aren't any. We're the reproductive studies, particularly focusing on female works. There aren't any. We're the developmental studies. We're the exposure to brain, immune system. There aren't any. We're the long-term chronic exposure studies looking at mitochondria or DNA content and mutation rates. There aren't any. There's a lot of doubts about the substance. It's dangerous. Interestingly, the studies that have been done on hormone disruption of 1080, the one that's been used by the Ministry of Health to set the safety standard in New Zealand, was one of these studies which was like going through Wellington Harbor with a mesh size as big as a house. Because it only looked for gross morphological defects, looking at the design of that experiment, I would conclude that it's not possible to come to any conclusion about the hormone disrupting capabilities of that toxin using that design because it's just fundamentally fluid. Now, in fact... Yeah. Hello. I'm Jeff Pachett, known as Jack. I got the opportunity to farm up the top end of the YRL farm called Mount Patriarch. I originally went to Patriarch in 1975 and helped the owner there with all the big jobs and then got the right to buy it in 1998, which I did. In 1997, we had one of the biggest outbreaks of Bayline tuberculosis in the top of the South Island. It was a 33-reactors and I was absolutely devastated being a cattle farmer. My wife and I were just to know what to do. Animal health board arrived and they said, well, it's in the possums. You're going to have to do something about that. And the best thing you can do is 10-80, we're planning on dropping a 10-80 drop on 29,000 years in behind our farm right down to Fatless Creek. Anyway, I was all forward. I said, look, if it gets rid of possums and my TB problem, yeah, go for it. Land on my lawn, if you like. I can remember actually saying that to them. They said it targeted possums and everything else would be okay. And we didn't know anything about it. We made it said it was a bad thing, but I didn't take much notice of him as a townie and I didn't take much notice of what he had to say. They did use the panics outside the house to fill the hoppers and they worked for a couple of days and just absolutely, they said they don't like to hear you say, blanket drop, 10-80. Well, this was dropping 10-80. It was a bait to every square meter and one of their biggest baits. We thought, well, that's good, that's over in Dumworth's, didn't think much of it. Wife and I would go for a walk around our little bit of forest block that we wouldn't let happen, everything seemed to be okay. About 10 days later, we could actually smell the death up in the valley behind us and met my neighbour, we went up and checked out water supply, there were 15 dead animals, including wood hen, deer and pigs. There were the dead birds, just black birds that I found first, but we found the three wood hen straight away, they were near the gate going to the neighbour's place and then continuously for the next week of so we were dragging animals out, animals were dying secondary poisoning. We thought, oh, this is absolutely terrible, what the hell are we done? Why did we ever let these bastards ever do this? Then we thought, what about our care? Christmas time, we would always have a traditional Christmas on the front lawn and the day after boxing day or the day after that was always a walk to the top of the mountain and basically to appreciate everything that we had. So we'd walked to mountain patriarch and we'd see care on the mountain. The most we would ever count was 23. That day, that was nearly three months after the drop, we couldn't count them, we couldn't count one, we just know care, we thought, oh, maybe this is, you know, it had moved off or something, we were up there again hunting months later, nothing and then we'd heard that 10, 80 years particularly tough on care so I went to dock and told them, they admitted that there was a fair chance that they may have poisoned the colony, but I said, look, they've admitted to me, well I can't you admit to the public, tell people what's actually happened, you love to skyd about your successes, tell them about your failures as well, that's fair. All I could get out of them was there's a good chance that we did kill your cares, well not my cares, everybody's cares. I was one of the saddest days of my life when I realised those cares were no longer on that mountain. There have been the farms are 120 years old and there's records, old books and things going back to a really strong colony of care on that mountain and then for them to just kill them like that. 2004, they come back for another drop and we were on to it this time, we said, look, you bastards have killed our cares, you've killed all that more pop, South Island tomtops completely gone. We're going to fight you two to know they're not coming anywhere near the place. We went to a commission, it was held in Blenum, my partner's submission in against it and told them what they've done, but they just sat there with smirks on their faces knowing for well that there's no proof. The commissioner, he said to me, you're too emotional Mr. Pachit, come back with some science, no, for well as a farm I didn't have any science, or the other science I had was what I'd seen, what my family had seen and what my neighbours had seen. Looking at the design of that experiment, I would conclude that it's not possible to come to any conclusion about the hormone disrupting capabilities of that toxin using that design because it's just fundamentally flawed. Now in fact, the design that was used for that experiment, I wouldn't even pass that research in an undergrade level of environmental studies at Victoria University because it just wouldn't stack up. In December 2008, the Ministry of Health released the following statement. Studies show that 1080 can cause fetal skeletal malformation, cardiomyopathy, damage to the heart muscle, and testicular effects reduction in sperm count in animals. To date, there are no known epidemiological studies that have been carried out in relation to 1080 and potential adverse health effects on humans. I think the question we have to ask is, who do we value? Do we value pregnant females and their unborn children if it's a human or they're unborn birds if it's a bird or whatever? I mean, if we value these things and if we're concerned about them, we need to have a close look. And all these things I gave to you to keep them to protect from the greatest of the big blue wave to the tiniest insect. It's a real little oven kindness, a weak, the wild is strong, and treat my creatures gently. Only you know right from wrong, I treat my creatures gently. Only you know right from wrong.