Michelle Liu Photo
Armmand (at right, with Cahn): Don’t soft-pedal it.
“Bugs” or “insects”? “Hypoxia” or “deplete”? “Organic” or “inorganic”?
A vote on a resolution urging New Haveners to refrain from using lawn chemicals stalled on the question of mincing words like these.
Chair Laura Cahn presented the other five members of the New Haven Environmental Advisory Council with a two-page draft of the resolution at a meeting of the group at City Hall Wednesday night.
Not everyone agreed on how best to ensure that the resolution would be passed by the Board of Alders and into the hands of city residents.
The proposed resolution aims to encourage people to refrain from using pesticides and synthetic fertilizers on lawns and gardens.
Cahn, who is authoring the resolution with council member Esther Armmand, delivered a completed draft of the document to the council after beginning work on it in June. Modeled after similar resolutions in other Connecticut municipalities like Branford, the resolution’s primary goal is to inform people about lawn chemicals and reduce the amount of those chemicals which enter New Haven’s ecosystems — part of what Cahn called a grassroots effort to encourage greater enforcement of pesticide usage.
The debate boiled down to what council Vice-Chair Kevin McCarthy called “wordsmithing.” McCarthy himself questioned the language of the resolution, saying that it implies that there are no benefits of using these lawn chemicals to maintain landscapes. That tone, McCarthy insisted, could alienate residents and the Board of Alders alike.
The draft of the resolution debated Wednesday states that lawn pesticides are “known to contaminate soil, plant life, groundwater, rivers, and wells” and that federal registration of pesticides is “No Guarantee of Safety.”
“There’s a diversity of views,” McCarthy said.
“There’s science,” Cahn countered. “Have you read the latest science?”
The resolution argues that “Children, pets and the unborn child are particularly vulnerable to adverse health effects of synthetic lawn pesticides such as cancer, asthma, and neurodevelopmental disorders. And …
“Lawn pesticides are known to contaminate soil, plant life, groundwater, rivers, and wells.”
It also argues that “increasing amounts of Nitrogen causing hypoxia (absence of oxygen) will in turn result in stress and death to the fish and plant life in the waters of Long Island Sound” while contributing to global warming.
The resolution calls for people to use composting to improve soil and maintain organic lawns and gardens. It urges people to refrain from using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Click here to read the full text of the proposed resolution presented Wednesday night.
The council serves an advisory function for the city. Its resolution, once adopted, would go to the Board of Alders for consideration.
Convincing the board of alders to pass a resolution which acknowledges the merits of lawn chemicals would be far easier than insisting these benefits don’t exist, McCarthy argued.
Cahn offered an alternative: having spoken to Yale scientists studying pesticides, she said, she suggested the resolution could include a word of encouragement for the development of less-harmful chemicals that target more specific plants and bugs.
Armmand, a former downtown alder, pointed out that the resolution is not directed toward the scientific community. She, too, pushed back against the idea of tailoring the tone of the resolution for the alders.
“Ultimately, if there is something on here they can’t live with, that’s what they’ll do,” she said. “I don’t think we should make it more palatable for them if we’ve done our job. I know it’s bold, but the thing we’re doing is bold.”
Respectable “Insects”
McCarthy: Acknowledge other arguments.
A conversation on the use of the word “organic” turned into a chemistry lesson: council member Henry Auer, a trained scientist, defined organic chemicals as carbon-based — which would mean that the pesticides the council is warning against would be considered as “organic.”
Cahn, on the other hand, said that “organic” in this sense meant natural enhancements to a lawn or garden, like egg shells, and not fertilizers manufactured in a chemical plant.
As the council mulled over wording, member Sarah Ganong suggested that the resolution feature a glossary to define contested or unclear terms such as “organic” and “hypoxia,” or the absence of oxygen. The council ultimately decided to strike “hypoxia” from the resolution given its obscurity. The council also chose to transform “bugs” into the more respectable-sounding “insects.”
Another question arose, this time from Auer: how would the resolution be communicated to city residents?
Cahn responded that she assumed once the ordinance was in the books, the alders’ approval would give the council a mandate to publicize it.
McCarthy suggested there be language added to the resolution to specify how its suggestions would reach beyond the confines of City Hall.
“Isn’t passing a resolution like this enough?” Cahn said.
The council eventually pushed a vote on the resolution to next month’s meeting on Oct. 5. The document will be tweaked to include the suggested glossary, a paragraph on disseminating the resolution itself to city residents and other minor word changes, Cahn confirmed to the board.
“Everybody give it a really good read,” she said.