Title: DuPont facing 30,000 claims for herbicide related tree deaths

[The New York Times 23 July 2012 by Jim Robbins] -- A year after it became clear that a new and highly touted lawn herbicide called Imprelis was killing and damaging many thousands of trees around the country, the manufacturer, DuPont, is busy processing claims for compensation. Some 30,000 homeowners, golf courses, municipalities and landscapers have submitted claims. The formal deadline for submission was Feb. 1, but a few are still trickling in and being accepted, the company said. The process will probably be completed by the fall, DuPont officials say.DuPont would not estimate how many trees have died from exposure the chemical, but experts on trees say it is likely in the hundreds of thousands, if not more. [ Photo caption: A dead evergreen, apparently killed by the herbicide Imprelis, in Janet and Robert DaPrato’s yard in Columbus, Ohio. The couple say they lost two trees last year and that two more have died since. Credit: Andrew Spear for The New York Times] Comment

“We’re making really good progress,” said Rik Miller, DuPont’s president for crop protection, who is in charge of the claims resolution process. Officials expect to have offers out to half of the claimants by the end of July, he added. The Baker National Golf Course in Minnesota, for one, has received an offer of $382,000 for its dead trees. But many lawn care operators and homeowners say they are frustrated by the pace of the claims process and communications from the company. “We’re hearing nothing,” said Janet DaPrato of Columbus, Ohio, who saw two trees in her yard die last year and has had two more die since. “We put in a claim for two trees, and now the problem is getting worse.”

Stewart Hanson of Arteka, a Minnesota landscaping company, said that DuPont had valued the trees of his clients at about $2,400 for a 20-foot conifer and $7,100 for a 40- footer. “The numbers look fair,” he said, but in some cases “we don’t know when the customers are going to get the proposal. It’s frustrating." Compensation for damage to trees that are still living is estimated at around $500, a sum that would go toward restorative treatment.

Weeks after lawn care professionals began applying the new product on lawns, golf courses and cemeteries around the country last spring, many trees on those properties, primarily conifers, started turning brown and dying. By August DuPont had pulled the chemical from the market, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency banned it shortly afterward. Heavily promoted to the lawn care industry as environmentally friendly because of its low toxicity to mammals, the product has proved costly for the company. DuPont officials say they have set aside $225 million for claims that people have already submitted and expect that the figure could eventually reach $575 million, though that is uncertain. Anything over $100 million would be submitted to DuPont’s insurers. That does not include costs related to a class action lawsuit filed by thousands of homeowners, landscapers and others, consolidated in federal court in Philadelphia.

In some cases, property owners who lost trees and started filing claims in October feel that DuPont’s response has been satisfactory, said Tim Drummond of Arborscape Lawn and Tree Care in Dorr, Mich., who reported that 92 of his clients suffered damages. But Mr. Drummond said that DuPont had been less responsive to larger claims and had made some mistakes, like writing checks in the wrong amount and then failing to respond to complaints. “Their strategy is to keep us in the dark,” he said. “It’s like writing a letter to Santa.” Mr. Miller of DuPont disputed that assertion and said the company prided itself on its responsiveness. “I’ve never seen any inquiry go for days or weeks,” he said.

As a condition of settlement, clients must wait for an inspection of large dead brown trees in their yard, sometime 30, 40 or 50 feet tall, before removing them. Mr. Drummond said he had replaced trees at his own expense for some clients whose claims against DuPont are still pending. “People have graduation parties coming up, and they are crying,” he said. He said he had “maxed out credit cards” and taken personal loans to keep those clients and keep his business going until the claims are processed.

While people with 40-foot dead trees are being compensated, realistically landscapers can only plant replacement trees that are 12 to 16 feet high, so people with very tall old trees are out of luck. Conifers are said to be especially vulnerable to the herbicide Imprelis.

Then there is the question of how long Imprelis, the trade name for a chemical called aminocycopyrachlor, will stay in the soil and whether it could affect new trees. Some experts suspect that the problem is not over. “There may be damage that has yet to be discovered,” said Bert Cregg, an associate professor of tree physiology at Michigan State University. “Some trees look worse this year.” He has advised people to wait at least until fall to plant new trees.

While Mr. Drummond has already proceeded, he said he was being careful, “I’ve been injecting activated charcoal into the root zone” as well as root fungus, which may neutralize the chemical, he said.

Experts warn that grass clippings from lawns treated with Imprelis should not be composted and put in garden beds, where they could kill other plants.

The burden on lawn care operators has been considerable. DuPont will compensate them for their work to remove and replace trees, but not for the time spent dealing with homeowners as the crisis unfolded. “These guys are taking it in a big way,” Dr. Cregg said. “They are the ultimate victims.”

More information is at www.imprelis-facts.com.

Original source



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Article: WeedsNews3557 (permalink)
Date: 23 July 2012; 3:00:09 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time

Author Name: David Low
Author ID: adminDavid