by Tom Flannagan

A sad chapter in New York City history may finally be drawing to a close as city officials got to work this month cleaning up an abandoned toxic waste dump that for years had plagued the neighboring community on Staten Island.

The dump is one of five city landfills involved in a 1982 federal investigation into illegal dumping which sent a city Department of Sanitation official (dubbed Johnny Cash by the tabloids) and a hauling operator to prison. Decades passed and those convicted served their time, but the sludge pits at the Brookfield landfill dump remained, leaching 95,000 gallons a day into groundwater and the nearby Richmond Creek.

As I write, officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are wading through the tens of thousands of letters Earthjustice supporters and their counterparts at MomsRising, Pesticide Action Network and United Farmworkers sent asking the agency to protect rural kids from pesticides.

These 42,000 people—along with 51 groups in 18 states—are publicly supporting our petition for safety standards to protect children who grow up near farms from the harmful effects of pesticide 'drift'—the toxic spray or vapor that travels from treated fields—and for immediate no-spray buffer zones around homes, schools, parks and daycare centers for the most dangerous and drift-prone pesticides.

As EPA officials complete their tally, I hope they're paying particular attention to the personal stories people shared in their letters. People like Cynthia Piper, of Lakewood, OH, who after seeing children exposed to pesticides suffer from deformities, fought for a right-to-know pesticide spray ordinance in her town. Or JeanAnn Hurst of Chowchilla, CA, whose son was exposed to the nerve-gas pesticide chlorpyrifos while on school grounds. You can find Cynthia and JeanAnn's stories on our interactive map. And if you've had a close encounter with pesticides yourself, please consider submitting your story as well.

The microblogging site Twitter is poised to hit a major milestone: sometime in the next day or so one lucky Twitter user is expected to send out the ten billionth tweet (real-time counter is here).

Whether you love exchanging ideas in 140-character bursts, or if U H8 the resulting abbrevs, people will be paying very close attention to the string of words that mark Twitter's ascension into the big, big time.

So what will that 10 billionth tweet say? How about "Protect Rural Kids From Pesticides! Take action here:http://bit.ly/dyq39N"?

Teresa de Anda, Californians for Pesticide Reform. Photo is from Tracy Perkins' collection: 25 Stories From the Central Valley

In case you missed it, NPR had a very good piece Sunday on Earthjustice's efforts to protect rural children from "pesticide drift"—the toxic spray or vapor that travels from pesticide-treated fields and into nearby communities.

Each year, nearly a billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed into fields and orchards around the country. And as our partner Teresa de Anda with Californians for Pesticide Reform told the NPR reporter, just about everyone in these agricultural areas has a story to tell about unnerving encounters with pesticides.

For more than a year, Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and other household cleaner giants have been refusing to follow a New York law requiring them to disclose the chemical ingredients in their products and the health risks they pose.

When we asked them nicely, they ignored us or refused. When thousands of people across the country put the pressure on them, they responded with platitudes and still did nothing. And for almost a year, they've been fighting a lawsuit against them, slowing down the process whenever possible.

But today, both sides got their day in court, arguing the case before a Manhattan judge. Earthjustice attorney Keri Powell reminded the court that studies have linked chemicals commonly found in household cleaners to health problems like asthma and reproductive abnormalities. And that people deserve to know whether the products they use to wash their dishes, launder their clothes, and clean their homes could be harmful.

Industry's response: we'd rather wait until the authorities force us to provide the information.

Okay, so technically the name for EPA's new hotline isn't Gas Busters. It's the 'Eyes On Drilling' Tipline. But with all the scary stuff happening in the gas fields these days, I couldn't resist. 

Folks in the oil and gas fields: if you see suspicious activity related to oil and gas drilling, call EPA at 1-877-919-4EPA (toll free number) or email eyesondrilling@epa.gov (This is the non-emergency number. For emergencies, stick with 911.)

Why does EPA need a hotline for suspicious gas drilling activity? Good question: These days, the gas industry has a new method for drilling gas. It's called horizontal hydraulic fracturing. And if it sounds scary, that's because it is. They take millions and millions of gallons of clean water, spike it with toxic chemicals, then blast the water thousands of feet beneath the ground into horizontally drilled wells, blasting the gas out of the rock pores. Some of the polluted water comes back up through the well. The rest stays in the ground, migrating who knows where.

Luis Medellin and his three little sisters—aged 5, 9 and 12—live in the middle of an orange grove in Lindsay, CA—a small farming town in California's Central Valley. During the growing season, Luis and his sisters are awakened several times a week by the sickly smell of nighttime pesticide spraying. What follows is worse: searing headaches, nausea, vomiting.

The Medellin family's story is not unique. From apple orchards in Washington to potato fields in Florida, poisonous pesticide 'clouds' plague the people who live nearby—posing a particular risk to the young children of the nation's farm workers, many of whom live in industry housing at the field's edge.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is known for firing on all cylinders—described by those who know him as having the stamina of the Energizer Bunny. Lately, he's turned his attention to the fact that the gas drilling industry is at New York's doorstep, clamoring for access to underground reserves and demanding the right to blast millions of gallons of chemically-treated water into the earth to extract the gas. We caught up with Borough President Stringer and asked him a few questions about his round-the-clock work on this pressing environmental concern.

A crop duster at work spraying pesticides

Today Earthjustice lined up alongside family farmers, consumers, farmworkers, fishermen, anti-hunger groups and a host of others in opposing the administration's selection of a pesticide industry insider to serve as our country's chief agricultural trade negotiator.

Deciding to oppose a nominee is not a decision we take lightly. But in this case it was the right thing to do.

When it comes to pesticides and GMOs, Islam Siddiqui has been on the wrong side of the issues too many times. His current gig—as vice president for science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America—speaks volumes. CropLife America is the agribusiness trade association whose members include Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow. It's also shorthand for how far we've strayed from sustainable agriculture practices. Putting Siddiqui at the helm certainly won't get us back on course.

Be honest. Instead of party-hopping Saturday night, wouldn't you rather stay in? Yes? Okay then, grab some popcorn and your Slanket, tune in to Planet Green at 8 EDT, and settle in for the television premiere of Split Estate.

This important new film chronicles the consequences of the gas drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West. It also presents a cautionary tale for those in the East, who are facing the fight of their lives as industry clamors for access to gas reserves buried in the Marcellus Shale deposit.