LIHUE — A fourth biotech seed company has joined a lawsuit aimed at blocking the County of Kauai’s implementation of Ordinance 960 related to pesticides and genetically modified crops.
BASF is now on board with the complaint, filed Jan. 10 in U.S. District Court in Honolulu by Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer and Agrigenetics, a company affiliated with Dow AgroSciences.
“BASF has completed its review of the situation and we believe that the ordinance is invalid,” company spokeswoman Fran Castle wrote in an email. “It arbitrarily targets our industry with burdensome and baseless restrictions on farming operations by attempting to regulate activities over which counties in Hawaii have no jurisdiction. These activities are already regulated by governmental agencies under state and federal laws.”
Her statement was nearly identical to statements released by Syngenta and Dow last month.
BASF is the smallest of Kauai’s four seed companies, leasing about 1,000 acres.
The lawsuit charges the county with violating the United States and Hawaii constitutions, multiple federal and state laws and the Kauai County Charter
BASF filed its complaint Feb. 7, according to Castle.
Ordinance 960 (formerly Bill 2491) “irrationally prohibits Plaintiffs from growing any crop, whether genetically modified or not, within arbitrarily drawn buffer zones inapplicable to other growers, and restricts Plaintiffs’ pesticide use within those buffer zones,” according to the complaint.
“The Bill also imposes unwarranted and burdensome disclosure requirements relating to pesticide usage and GM crops that compromise Plaintiffs’ confidential commercial information and unnecessarily exposes Plaintiffs to risks of corporate espionage, vandalism and environmental terrorism,” it states.
Although also affected by the new law, slated to take effect Aug. 16, Kauai Coffee has not joined the suit.
County Councilman Gary Hooser, who co-introduced the bill that became law, said he wasn’t surprised the company joined the suit.
“BASF is the largest chemical company in the world and suing the smallest county in Hawaii for the right to spray poison next to schools fits right into their historical corporate culture,” he said.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs say they are “likely to prevail on their constitutional and statutory claims” against the county and “pray” the court declare Bill 2491 as invalid and award them “reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs.”
Ordinance 960 was passed by the Kauai County Council in November via a veto override. It requires companies that use above a certain threshold of restricted use pesticides to disclose their use of all pesticides and the presence of genetically modified crops, establish buffer zones around sensitive areas and requires the county to complete a health and environmental impact study of the industry.
A scheduling conference related to Syngenta is scheduled for April 14 in U.S. District Court in Honolulu.
On Wednesday, the council unanimously voted to approve the allocation of $75,000 to start searching for special counsel services to defend the ordinance in court.
