ALBANY, NY – To the dismay of the chemical lawn care industry and the New York State School Boards Association and to the delight of anti-pesticide activists, Governor David Paterson this week signed a bill banning the use of commonly used pesticides on school ball fields and daycare playgrounds. School s will have one year to phase out their use.
The Governor’s signature comes one month after the NY State Senate passed, by a 39-22 margin, the Child Safe Playing Fields Act (S. 4983).
The bill was similar to nine others that have been floated in the state legislature since 2001 and died. This time – lubricated by intense political maneuvering and motivated entirely for political reasons, says opponents – it gained traction. And this in spite of concerted efforts to kill it by supporters of the lawn care industry, including the New York Alliance for Environmental Concerns and Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE), the national advocate for the specialty chemical industry.
Giving some appearance of legitimacy to their efforts, lawmakers supporting the bill pointed to a study from the Grassroots Environment Education, an organization that promotes “manual” turf care. That study, which surfaced this past March during legislative committee discussions on the bill, said that schools can perform organic lawn care as economically as traditional chemical-based turf care, a claim that traditional lawn care business owners dispute.
Lawn care industry supporters, in opposing the bill, pointed to their training as professional applicators and the stringent regulations that govern the use of products such as herbicides and insecticides, all of which have been approved for use at federal and state levels. Claims that the use of these products on school properties threatens students’ health are overblown and exaggerated, claimed the lawn care industry.
The industry was supported by the NY State School Boards Association, which opposed the bill on the grounds that it was unnecessary.
“The legislation completely disregards the positive track record our school districts have in applying these products correctly and responsibly when they are needed, while at the same time keeping students healthy and safe,” said David Little, director of government relations for the Association, in an op-ed piece in the Buffalo News.
Meanwhile, anti-pesticide crusaders such Paul Tukey, the media savvy founder of SafeLawns.org, and Washington, D.C.-based Beyond Pesticides praised passage of the measure, claiming it was an important step in protecting the health of young people in the state.
