By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

GREENSBORO, N.C. — An anti-atrazine lawsuit brought by the Holiday Shores Sanitary District (HSSD) in Madison, Ill., against Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc. should be heard by an Illinois third judicial district judge sometime this year.

The plaintiff, represented by Peoria, Ill., attorney Steven Tillery, alleges that any measurable level of atrazine in municipal water supplies poses a significant health risk to humans. Originally filed in 2004, the suit was reintroduced by Tillery in August 2009 and identifies Growmark, a distributor of atrazine, as a co-defendant.
Tillery and the HSSD want Syngenta to pay to have atrazine removed from water supplies.

“Our response to that is that the atrazine levels in the water at the holiday Shores Sanitary District – when present – have always been below federal standards,” Dr. Tim Pastoor, principal scientist for Syngenta, told Farm World. “Our view is that this lawsuit is a completely unnecessary waste of taxpayers’ money. These are extensive, expensive investigations.”

Kurtis B. Reeg, Syngenta’s attorney for the case, said a 150-pound adult could drink literally thousands of gallons of water with atrazine at 3 parts per billion every day for 70 years and not experience adverse effects.

“The mere filing of this new lawsuit suggests additional forum shopping by out-of-town attorneys who turn neighbor against neighbor to seek profit for themselves,” Reeg said.

“The attorneys in this case are quite flamboyant and have been very public in their viewpoints,” said Pastoor.

The Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Assoc. has said a negative judgment in the case would seriously threaten atrazine use in Illinois, along with serving to override the well-established regulatory process used to assure safe use of fertilizers and crop protection products. Atrazine is used on approximately 70 percent of cornfields in Illinois.

A nearly identical lawsuit to the HSSD case in Illinois was recently filed in a federal court.

“Filing in federal court appears to be a misstep, given the Iberville Parish, Louisiana, case which was dismissed by Chief Judge Butler in Mobile, Alabama, in 1999,” said Reeg. “Judge Butler ruled that removing safe and approved levels of atrazine from drinking water was unnecessary and that shifting the costs of such unnecessary removal was wrong.

“This decision was also upheld on appeal, and we hope the court will rely on this past verdict to guide future decisions.”

Some damage and liability claims related to the Illinois case were voluntarily dismissed in February, according to Reeg.

“With that disarray, it appears attorneys are scrambling to another venue in which to waste scarce taxpayer resources with junk science and false allegations for personal gain at the expense of U.S. agriculture,” Reeg said.

“If science leads the way, the result of the lawsuit will be favorable to atrazine.” added Pastoor.