Wil Andruschak

Robin McLeod says lawns of native fescue grass are a good alternative to pesticide-sprayed non-native grasses that require large amounts of water. “[Fescue] actually looks just as good,” she says

Calgary could follow the lead of other Canadian municipalities and phase out cosmetic pesticide use within two years if an aldermanic push to ban the controversial chemicals is successful.

Aldermen Druh Farrell, Joe Ceci and Brian Pincott will introduce a motion later this month that could ban pesticide use in city parks by December of next year, and ban their use on private land by December 2010. “It’s a long time coming,” says Robin McLeod, a member of the Coalition for a Healthy Calgary. “The health risks of using pesticides to make your lawns look beautiful and weedless aren’t worth the risk.” Over 135 Canadian municipalities have made the decision to ban cosmetic pesticides — chemicals used to improve appearance — and local anti-pesticide activists have been urging Calgary’s city council to do the same for more than a decade. The city’s own imagineCALGARY sustainability plan calls for zero pesticide use by 2010.

Both Ceci and Farrell say they receive complaints about pesticides from their constituents. “If… other places in Canada can do it, there’s nothing stopping us from stepping up and eliminating pesticides from places where they’re not required,” says Ceci. (Under the proposed new rules, pesticides could still be used for commercial, agricultural and emergency purposes.) Farrell, who campaigned on a promise to reduce pesticide use, says “there’s a change of thinking” regarding pesticides. “The evidence keeps on building that there’s a health risk,” she says.

Numerous studies have linked pesticides to reproductive problems, cancer, leukemia and other medical problems in humans. “It’s a no-brainer, really,” says Dr. Bob Dickson, a Calgary family physician who’s a member of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. “We just don’t need this stuff. We don’t need golf-course-manicured lawns in our society anymore…. These [chemicals] accumulate in our system.” Pesticides also contaminate the atmosphere and leech into groundwater, polluting the Bow River. “They affect our wildlife, they affect our pets and they affect our environment adversely as well,” says Dickson.

The city has already been phasing out pesticide use in public parks. Simon Wilkins, the city’s integrated pest management co-ordinator, says the city uses one-third the amount of pesticides it used 10 years ago. “We’re going to continue to reduce as we can into the future,” says Wilkins, adding the main problem in the city is homeowner use of pesticides — specifically, products that combine fertilizer and herbicide. “The problem is when they’re bound together, you end up having the herbicide broadcast-sprayed on the whole yard when the fertilizer’s applied,” he says. “Even though you only need to have the herbicide spot applied, you end up having it everywhere.”

These weed-and-feed products make up roughly 80 per cent of pesticide products bought by Calgary homeowners, and the city is pushing the Alberta government to introduce a sales ban on these products. “If that was removed, then right away of course you’d have a massive reduction in the use,” says Wilkins. “Then people would have to figure out how to use things properly.” Wilkins says a sales ban would be more effective than a bylaw regulating use. “There’s been evidence out there suggesting that if the city creates a use bylaw and it can’t create a sales bylaw, the use bylaws don’t actually affect what people do,” he says. “People just do the same thing at the end of the day… they just do it when they think no one’s looking.”

While some Calgarians douse their lawns with pesticides and copious amounts of water to keep them green, others maintain their lawns differently. McLeod says a simple alternative to using pesticides is to plant grasses that naturally thrive in Calgary’s chinook climate. “Use native species: fescue grasses that don’t want fertilizer and don’t want pesticides,” she says. “[Fescue] actually looks just as good as Kentucky blue grass. It just doesn’t need the water.” (Kentucky blue grass is the bright green grass favoured by most North Americans.) Ceci says he’s also found alternatives to using pesticides on his lawn. “It means walking around the lawn with your dandelion puller before you cut the lawn,” he says. “Or it means cutting the heads off dandelions when they’re in the yellow stage, as opposed to letting them blow in the wind. Those alternatives are there for us.”

The aldermen’s notice of motion, which goes before council February 25, asks the city administration to bring a draft bylaw to the Standing Policy Committee on Utilities and Environment in June. If the bylaw is approved there, it will then go before council. Ceci and Farrell are both optimistic that their council colleagues will approve it. “Certainly, attitudes have changed toward it, and we can take from the experience of other cities who have tried it,” says Farrell. “We’re one of the last.”