Darin Morik - The Garden Island
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LIHUE — The Kauai County Council authorized the Office of the County Attorney Wednesday to spend another $50,000 to defend the county’s law regulating pesticides and genetically modified organisms, Ordinance 960, in federal court.

That brings the total amount spent so far on special counsel services in the case to $175,000.

“The money for (Ordinance) 960 is a part of the cost of doing business, but it pales in comparison to all of the other legal costs and exposure the county is undergoing due to employee actions,” Councilman Gary Hooser said. “Ordinance 960 is only part of the story.”

In January, Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer and Agrigenetics Inc., a company affiliated with Dow AgroSciences, filed suit against Kauai County, charging it with violating the United States and Hawaii constitutions, multiple federal and state laws and the Kauai County Charter in passing Ordinance 960, formerly Bill 2491. BASF joined the complaint a month later.

The companies argue the ordinance is invalid and arbitrarily targets their industry with “burdensome and baseless” restrictions on farming operations by attempting to regulate activities over which counties have no jurisdiction.

Though it was also affected by the law, Kauai Coffee did not join the lawsuit.

Ordinance 960 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, as well as establish buffer zones around sensitive areas, including schools and hospitals. It also requires the county to complete a health and environmental impact study of the industry.

The law was initially scheduled to take effect in August, but a court order has delayed implementation until October.

Oral arguments in the case were delivered last month during a federal court hearing in Honolulu, where U.S. District Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren asked attorneys to focus their arguments on whether state and federal laws pre-empt Ordinance 960.

Kurren has not yet issued a ruling on the case as of Wednesday.