Should cities ban pesticides on public property? Los Angeles found it couldn’t keep its playgrounds usable without herbicides. Many schools have found they can’t keep down rats and roaches—and the diseases they spread—without chemical help.
Oakland, California, found it had a fire problem. In 1991, flammable trees and shrubs on the city’s hillsides turned into massive torches. A huge wildfire destroyed 3,000 buildings and killed 25 people.
Since then, thousands of Oakland volunteers have cut fire-prone trees such as the Australian eucalyptus, and such incendiary shrubs as French broom. Volunteer goatherds supervise targeted munching on the hillsides. Trucks with cherry-picker arms swing workers up to clear fire-prone plants from the steepest hillsides.
But it’s not enough. Trees regrow quickly from cut stumps. Cutting off a shrub doesn’t kill the root. The fuel load in the hills is mounting.
And Oakland has had a ban against chemical weed killers.
Robert Seiben, who has personally volunteered more than 2,000 hours in the past four years trying to clear the hazardous trees and plants, says he’s tired of fighting the wild plant life hand-to-hand.
The Oakland Tribune says “only a handful of people” oppose fire-control herbicides, but they claim that using even such ultra-safe herbicides as Roundup and atrazine will endanger the health of chemically sensitive people. “There is not a safe use of pesticides,” says Maxina Ventura of East Bay Pesticide Alert.
“We are part of a larger biosystem and poisoning parts of it harms all of us. We would like to be able to run, hike and bike in the parks without worrying that we are going to be rubbing against, or sitting in, Roundup,” declared resident Lori Menachof.
No health threats to humans, pets, or wild critters have ever been documented from atrazine or glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. On the other hand, Oaklanders face lots of risks from not using them: Controlled burns can break loose. Hillside volunteers can fall and break bones. Goats running loose can trigger traffic accidents on nearby roads.
Through it all, the 25 people who died in the 1991 fire stand as mute but eloquent witnesses to the urgent need for vegetation control.
Another local resident noted the success of local herbicide use in a letter to the Contra Costa Times. “East on Highway 24. . .On your left French broom. . .dominates slopes on both sides of the highway where it was cut but not sprayed with herbicide. It took two years to remove 20 large dumpsters of this highly flammable bush from the Hiller Highlands, using Roundup on cut stumps too large to pull out by hand. Over the next two years, seedlings were sprayed during the rainy season, allowing no broom to seed. Herbicide was rarely used again. Now, less flammable native plants are thriving along with the animals that feed upon them, and the number of broom seedlings is decreasing dramatically year by year. Oakland needs to use this herbicide. . . to keep this invasive intruder from forming impenetrable thickets that could contribute to another firestorm.”
Is the use of safety-tested pesticides really such a hard decision to make?