As of this coming Thursday (july 15th), CT Public Act 09-56 goes into effect. This new law establishes that all schools in Connecticut, both public and private, with grades K-8, ban lawn-care pesticides on both their school grounds as well as on their playing fields as of July 1, 2010. It is important that all schools with grades K-8 be aware of this new law as well as the parents who have children who attend these schools.
The New Law can be found at the website below http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/ACT/PA/2009PA-00056-R00SB-01020-PA.htm
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Nancy Alderman, President
Environment and Human Health, Inc.
1191 Ridge Road
North Haven, CT 06473
(phone) 203-248-6582
(Fax) 203-288-7571
http://www.ehhi.org
http://ehhijournal.org
5 comments:
Good news, indeed. Schools above the 8th grade can begin poisoning the children with a clean slate!
additional information from Nancy Alderman: "When one is working with the CT Legislature one has to look at what policies need to be implemented and then also look at what actually can get passed by the legislature and turned into law.
There was a great deal of opposition to banning pesticides on school grounds [KS added note: opposition from the lawn care industry]-- and so it was decided by a large group of environmental organizations that the best chance one had to pass a pesticide ban on school grounds was to ask for a law that would protect our smallest children, grades 8 and below. That was therefore what was done.
The plan is now to show everyone in the year-to-come how wonderfully organic fields can be. We already have a number of towns that have had organic fields for a few years. Cheshire, Branford and Greenwich all have beautiful organic fields. Once all the naysayers can see how good organic fields can be, then we all can think about moving the law to include the high schools. The new law only went into effect on July 1, so that we need at least a year to show how well the fields can look without use of the pesticides.
The many pesticide signs I saw at Woodrow Wilson yesterday did give me pause. Either they were applied before the ban took effect as a last chance effort, or the City didn't get the memo...
Karen, thanks for that clarification. Knowing how things work, it makes sense that starting small is better than not starting at all.
I agree with your comment about the lawn care industry opposing these bans. They are losing a lot of money as people investigate going organic and/or planting more sustainable grass that needs less care.
Are we talking about football and football fields? If so, this is like talking about religion. Feelings run high on testosterone-fueled debates about "turf" and change of any kind to the beauty of pesticide perfection is frequently viewed as a grave threat.
Being practical is a necessity but our big, adolescent children should protected as well as our little ones.
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