Herbicides

Critics are protesting a Border Patrol plan to poison vegetation along a 1.1-mile stretch of the Rio Grande riverbank to eliminate dense foliage used as hiding places by illegal immigrants and smugglers. Some opponents of the action compare it to the Agent Orange chemical spraying program during the Vietnam War. The $2.1-million pilot project is due to begin this week.

In an unsettling turnabout of modern farming's biological warfare against weeds, a team of Danish researchers reported today that some genetically engineered plants designed to withstand herbicides can pass those new genes to nearby weeds, which in turn become resistant to chemicals meant to eradicate them.

During the peak growing season, concentrations of herbicides in middle America's drinking water can soar to levels much higher than federal standards, says an environmental study released Thursday. The chemical industry and local water system officials say this does not necessarily mean the water is unsafe to drink. But the Environmental Protection Agency said the findings are cause for concern.

A car crashed into an herbicide truck in Newport Beach Wednesday morning, leaving the motorist trapped and causing a minor spill. The driver of the car, Paul Diamond, 36, of Laguna Beach, suffered a neck sprain, and firefighters had to cut him out of his car. The truck driver, Michael Skapik, 32, of La Habra, received a laceration to his forehead. Both men were also splashed on the arms and shoulders with the herbicide, a 1% solution of a weed-killer, police and firefighters said.

Colombia halted aerial spraying of chemicals on drug crops along its border with Ecuador after Quito renewed charges that the U.S.-backed anti-narcotics program was harming residents and farms. Colombia had said the fumigation was vital to destroying the coca leaf, which is used to manufacture cocaine. Now it plans to send 1,200 workers to kill the plants by hand.

Despite widespread spraying of defoliants financed by the U.S., total acreage of coca cultivated in Colombia rose 19% in 2006 compared with 2005, according to an annual survey by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The report stresses that much of the gain may be attributed to an expansion of the area included in the survey, which is done by satellite, airplane and on the ground.

Let's begin by agreeing that the Los Angeles City Council's Rules and Elections Committee is not exactly Comedy Central. That's not saying committee Chairman Eric Garcetti isn't a host with a sense of humor. He is. But hey, it's Rules and Elections. Short of passing out whoopee cushions and nachos, you can only do so much. But this Wednesday's meeting may be different because the committee is going to discuss instant runoff voting.

Ecuador recalled its ambassador from Bogota, escalating a diplomatic spat over Colombia's fumigation of illegal drug crops along the shared border. Ecuador says U.S.-backed spraying of herbicides in Colombia hurts the environment and damages the health of people on its side of the border.

Colombia pushed on with chemical spraying of the coca plants used to make cocaine along its border with Ecuador in a campaign stoking diplomatic tensions between the Andean neighbors. Ecuadorean President-elect Rafael Correa canceled a trip to Bogota to protest the fumigation with the herbicide glyphosate, which Ecuador says is harming crops and residents on its side of the border.

Stanislaus National Forest officials can go ahead with a plan to spray herbicide over nearly 1,200 acres near Yosemite National Park, regional U.S. Forest Service officials said. The herbicide is meant to kill brush that national forest officials said has taken over an area that burned 17 years ago. The proposal had run into opposition from environmental organizations and Native American groups who say plants used by humans will also be killed.