Proposed ordinance takes aim at certain pesticides
STAMFORD — The Board of Representatives is expected to vote next month on whether to ban the use of nonorganic pesticides on city property.
Under the proposed ordinance, the city would be required to use only organic pesticides and fertilizers on any property it owns, occupies or controls, including streets, sidewalks, parks, athletic fields and beaches.
“This is a good step forward, I believe, for the city of Stamford,” Mayor David Martin said last week during a meeting of the board’s Operations Committee. “There are some uncertainties. There’s always some questions. But I believe that we can do this. I believe that we should do this. There will be some cost involved. I believe that it is certainly appropriate to make those costs.”
“I will be honest,” he added, “we may need to tune this up a little bit after we
get some experience. It may be that we need a year to figure it out. But I believe it’s time to move ahead, and therefore I’m very supportive of this.”
The proposed ordinance, which would go into effect next year, also singles out products that contain the herbicide glyphosate; the herbicide 2,4-D; the soil fumigant 1,3-D; the insecticide chlorpyrifos; and neonicotinoid insecticides.
The legislation includes some exceptions that would allow the use of nonorganic products in certain situations. But there are fewer exceptions for products that contain any one of those five controversial substances.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend the ordinance for final adoption. The full Board of Representatives is set to consider it on Sept. 8.
The lead sponsor of the proposed ordinance is Rep. Nina Sherwood, D-8, who said it was “based on the health of the environment and on public safety.”
“As many of you know, I’ve spent two and a half years doing research on this ordinance,” Sherwood said. “I’ve worked with every city department that this ordinance affects and have crafted this language in a way that is going to be executable by the city with the least amount of resources possible.”
Part of Tuesday’s meeting consisted of a public hearing, where 10 people, mostly city residents, spoke in support of the proposed ordinance.
Among the speakers was Leigh Shemitz, president of the nonprofit ecological group SoundWaters, who said that chemicals put on the ground move downstream and end up in Long Island Sound, where they are absorbed by animals.
Another speaker, Daniel Raichel, acting director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s pollinator initiative, was particularly supportive of the ban on neonicotinoids, or neonics.
If passed, the ordinance would require Stamford’s director of operations to submit an annual report listing the products it uses on city property. City Rep. J. R. McMullen, R-18, urged the Operations Committee to amend the language to require that the report also look at the costs associated with the ban on nonorganic products as well as its effects on “available field time.”
Martin said it would be difficult to gauge the true cost, and it would also be a challenge, he noted, to quantify the benefits of the ordinance.
“They’re not as easily measured, as important as they are,” Martin said. “They don’t easily fit on the accountant’s balance sheet.”
Still, Martin said the city would try to estimate the ordinance’s impacts, including financial.
During the virtual meeting, City Rep. Dennis Mahoney, R-20, who is a member of the Operations Committee, asked the mayor why the city had not halted use of nonorganic pesticides on its own.
“We’ve had the opportunity to do this over the last several years,” Mahoney said. “Why only now through an ordinance?”
Martin said his administration has been busy tackling a number of other issues. Aside from that, he said there were two other considerations.
“One is that in the budget process, it’s one thing to go to the Board of Finance and (say) that this is an ordinance that mandates that the city behave … in a certain way, and therefore we need $5,000, $50,000, whatever it is,” Martin said. “That’s a very different point of view than going to the Board of Finance at budget time and saying, ‘Well, we’d like to spend $62,000 on improving our fields.’”
“The second thing is this: I’m prepared to go forward. I don’t know that my successor is,” he said. Martin is up for reelection this year.
Another question raised during the meeting was how the ordinance would affect schools.
The ordinance would require organic products for school grounds unless nonorganic products are “expressly permitted to be used at those locations by law.”
Dana Lee, an attorney in the city’s law department, said the Board of Education follows state guidelines when it comes to using pesticides on school property.
“And the state allows the Board of Ed to apply certain pesticides that may not be organic products,” Lee told the committee. “They’re minimal risk pesticides, from what I understand.”