Changes to Salmon Arm’s pesticide bylaw have local lawn care and landscaping professionals crying unfair.
Monday, city council gave final reading to the recently amended bylaw that includes a number of new exceptions. Among these, council has given city staff the go-ahead to use pesticides to treat infestations, and on municipal infrastructure (hardscapes that include sidewalks, roads and boulevards) when all other control methods have been exhausted.
To Al Schneider, the owner of Green Velvet Lawn & Tree Care, this exclusion will only further weaken what is already a flawed bylaw.
“One of the things that bothers me the most about it, is if this bylaw was put in for the purpose of helping the environment, why wouldn’t this apply to the City of Salmon Arm as it applies to us in the industry?” asks Schneider. “If these things are harmful for the environment, why can they now use them and we, who have been trained for many years in the handling and use of the products, cannot?”
Salmon Arm Easy Feed owner Frank Rakow, and Dean and Grace Edwards of Salmon Arm Property Maintenance, share Schneider’s frustration with the bylaw, which they say will push property owners to take matters into their own hands and further exacerbate the problem.
“By taking the products out of the hands of professionals and industry, homeowners, when they see they’re getting a certain amount of weeds in their population… they can go and buy the products themselves,” says Schneider, noting that while use of certain pesticides, such as Roundup, is banned under the bylaw, they can still be purchased locally by anyone. “They mishandle, they don’t dispose properly, and who knows at what rates these products are being put down. You’ve made the problem worse by forcing a homeowner to use a product they don’t know how to use.”
During the year-plus the bylaw has been in place, Schneider says he’s been successful in some instances using organic products. But when it comes to controlling weeds on turf and other hardscapes, he says there’s nothing prescribed in the bylaw that effectively gets to the root of the problem.
Rakow agrees.
“I sprayed acetic acid for the City of Salmon Arm last year,” says Rakow. “We did an experimental case, we sprayed it, and it cost them, I would say, at least 30 times as much money as with Roundup… and we were told that two weeks later, the weeds that we did spray were back growing again.”
Schneider, Rakow and the Edwards say they would like the city to make a similar exception for those people, like themselves, with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) certification, such as the Kamloops and Kelowna pesticide bylaws do.
Dean Edwards also argues that pesticides banned under the bylaw should be sold only to those with certification. He notes the bylaw appears to target only the certified IPM applicators, which amounts to about one per cent of the pesticides used in the area. The majority, he says, is used by agriculture.
“It seems kind of odd, they allow you to spray it on your fruit and eat this product, but you’re not allowed to spray it on your lawn,” says Dean. “I just don’t know where they’re going with it. If it’s okay to eat this product why isn’t it okay to spray it on your lawn and walk on it?”
Rakow, who’s been using synthetic pesticides for 17 years, says he’s never seen any negative health effects on his customers, their pets or his workers. And, like the Edwards and Schneider, he says he’s yet to see any science that contradicts Health Canada’s findings on chemicals like Roundup.
“We are professionals in our field, bottom line,” said Rakow. “I personally wouldn’t do anything that I knew was unhealthy for people. I’m a strong believer in Health Canada, and they tell me the products I’m using are perfectly safe.
“Like I said before, if the doctors in this town, some of the very few that are so vocal, if they can prove to me through peer-reviewed studies that they are unsafe, I’ll shut my business down.”