Damage to Environment at Issue : Aerial Attack on Coca? Peru Stalls U.S. Plan

The U.S. government is trying to persuade Peru that aerial spraying to destroy coca fields will not further damage a jungle environment already ravaged by the cocaine industry itself.

Supporters of the spraying program contend that the chemical herbicide proposed for the anti-cocaine program is less toxic than aspirin and the only practical option for large-scale coca eradication. Environmentalists are less sure: An American group has warned of “ecological catastrophe.”

Neither side doubts that the cultivation of coca and its processing into cocaine paste inflicts immense harm in the Andes. In addition to feeding corruption, violence and local drug addiction, illicit cocaine production increasingly has come to be recognized as a nightmare for the environment.

Rivers Affected

At least 150 rivers in the Upper Huallaga Valley, the center of Peru’s coca production, have suffered perhaps irreparable contamination from chemicals used to process cocaine paste in jungle camps, according to a study issued last September by Buenaventura Marcelo, a professor at the National Agrarian University. Since 1970, cocaine paste producers have dumped millions of gallons of sulfuric acid, acetone and other toxic chemicals into streams that flow into the Amazon, Marcelo said, creating “a grave threat to the survival of the region’s rich aquatic resources.”

American officials say the need for aerial spraying is most acute in Peru because the Upper Huallaga Valley has been convulsed by violence that makes manual eradication dangerous and sometimes fatal. A Maoist guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a pro-Moscow Marxist group, have both moved into Huallaga and apparently work closely with the peasant producers and the wealthy, heavily armed buyers.

Alexander Watson, the U.S. ambassador to Peru, said last week that aerial spraying is the only solution, given the physical danger of clearing fields by hand. He said current tests of herbicides being carried out in the jungle will answer “the questions that need to be asked” on safety and health.

The project suffered a setback in May when Eli Lilly & Co. of Indianapolis announced that it would not make its herbicide tebuthiuron available for the Andean spraying program. Lilly said only that “a number of practical and policy considerations preclude our participation.”

Peruvian newspapers have noted that a folder distributed with the Lilly product, which is sold under the brand name Spike in granular form and Graslan in liquid form, calls for extreme caution to avoid fatal injuries. The folder says that the herbicide will kill trees and shrubs if their roots come in contact with the product.

Ann B. Wrobleski, U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics matters, said Lilly’s withdrawal did not result from environmental concern, but from fear that its Latin American employees might be attacked by drug traffickers.

She told reporters in Washington in mid-June that the U.S. government has sufficient stocks of Spike and Graslan to carry out the project if the Peruvian government approves it. Testing is going on at six sites in Huallaga, she said, noting that the product is used widely in the United States.

Still, there is concern in the United States and Peru. Six scientists from the Study Group on the Environment in Latin America, based at Cornell University, said in a recent letter to a Peruvian magazine: “Members of the scientific community do not doubt that the application of tebuthiuron will cause an ecological catastrophe in Huallaga.”

U.S. Officials Frustrated

The group, acknowledging that the cocaine industry is already catastrophic for the environment and the people of Huallaga, said that U.S. officials, frustrated by their failure to eradicate coca, now seem bent on “doing something spectacular, however ineffective, to try to combat cocaine trafficking. . . . . But do they really believe that the herbicides can select those plants sought by the police?”

Coca production is now estimated to cover between 250,000 and 400,000 acres in Peru alone, up from about 40,000 acres in 1974. The product generates between $600 million and $750 million in foreign exchange for Peru, equal to one-third of the country’s legal export earnings.

Peasant growers earn up to $2,200 a year per hectare (2.5 acres) of coca. Crop substitution programs have had minimal success because growers can earn 10 times as much selling coca leaves, so the emphasis is on eradication.

A study by A. Lawrence Christy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture describes tebuthiuron as less toxic than aspirin and says it poses no threat of causing mutation or danger to reproduction. The report says current studies will determine how long the herbicide will remain in the Peruvian soil.

Bolivian Response

A number of scientists and politicians have urged far more thorough testing to assess potential long-term effects before the program is given approval. Bolivia, where manual eradication has proven more effective, has indicated it will not opt for spraying. Peruvian President Alan Garcia has said only that he is awaiting test results.

Signs of resentment and suspicion of American eradication plans sometimes surface in both Peru and Bolivia, fed by a sense that poor countries are paying heavy political and economic costs because Americans cannot control their drug habit.

Bolivian Foreign Minister Guillermo Bedregal said this month that “Bolivia will not be the guinea pig for experimentation with herbicides that may have adverse effects on other vegetation and do damage to the inhabitants.”

Awareness is growing, however, of the environmental scourge of coca production. Prof. Marcelo said the kerosene and chemicals pouring into the Huallaga water system reduce water oxygen levels and make the fish that survive dangerous to eat. Algae is increasing and choking the rivers, he said.

In a separate study, Prof. Marc J. Dourojeanni, also from the agricultural university, said coca production has caused the deforestation of 10% of Peru’s Amazon region, with resulting erosion and flooding. He noted that the coca growers themselves use great volumes of herbicides to control weeds that reduce output.