[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 28, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E40]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        RECOGNIZING SHEILA DAAR

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. RONALD V. DELLUMS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 28, 1998

  Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise to 
recognize Sheila Daar, an expert in the field of integrated pest 
management (IPM), who has been awarded a 1997 Stratospheric Ozone 
Protection Award by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The award 
recognizes extraordinary achievements and international leadership in 
protecting the Earth's protective stratospheric ozone layer.
  Ms. Daar is the Executive Director of the non-profit Bio-Integral 
Resource Center (BIRC). This organization works with government 
agencies and the private sector to design and implement least-toxic IPM 
programs for solving pest problems in agricultural and urban systems.
  Since 1992, Ms. Daar has developed and disseminated practical 
information on non-chemical alternatives to the toxic fumigant methyl 
bromide, focusing on California crops, including strawberries and 
grapes, that use significant amounts of this pesticide. Methyl bromide 
is a class one ozone depleting substance scheduled for phaseout in 2001 
under terms of the U.S. Clean Air Act. Ms. Daar and her staff have 
documented alternatives, established on-farm applied research and 
demonstration projects, and conducted technical outreach programs to 
assist farmers and urban pest control companies to adopt alternatives 
to methyl bromide. She is an active member of the United Nations Methyl 
Bromide Technical Option Committee, and co-author of IPM Alternatives 
to Methyl Bromide and other publications on this topic.
  The Environmental Protection Award is significant because it 
recognizes the two decades of research and public education that Ms. 
Daar performed. She is a pioneer in the field of integrated pest 
management in a state and a culture that took pride in synthetic 
chemical response to pests and the development of pesticides and 
herbicides of great variety and power. Ms. Daar has made significant 
contributions to our present understanding of the wide, unexpected 
sweep and longevity of these toxins, in terms of poisoning our soil, 
our biosystem, and our atmosphere.
  She has labored long in agricultural fields, along the sides of 
California's highways, in city lots and anywhere where plants grow; 
espousing, and teaching the values of reduced dependence on synthetic, 
chemical toxins.
  Ms. Daar's early horticultural successes were in teaching as well as 
being appointed to the State of California Pest Management Advisory 
Committee in 1993, and to the California Department of Transportation's 
Public Advisory Liaison System, in 1995. She continues to serve on both 
bodies.
  I am enormously pleased to recognize this remarkable woman on behalf 
of my district, my state and my country.

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