City Council Out of Control?

[Jumper]

The leftist leaning City of Ottawa Council is now holding a farcical "consultation process" with the public to decide on how and when they are going to outlaw the "Cosmetic" use of herbicides and insecticides on PRIVATE PROPERTY! They already have spent $400K of my taxes on a propaganda campaign to let us know "This is a beautiful lawn." Yes this will also include the application of chemicals by tree care professionals.

I for one am not going to be dictated by a bunch of idiots what I am going to apply on my property, especially given the products in question are legally approved for sale in this Province and Country.

It might have been easy to ramrod a non smoking bylaw through but I want to see bylaw enforcement try to regulate what 150,000 homeowners put on their lawns and gardens, given the products will still be available at your local WalMart for example.

Anyone else out there dealing with similar idiocy and trampling of rights? I see a lot of businesses going under, especially those in the lawn care industry.

For the record I do not "carpet bomb" my lawn with 2-4-D, prefering to spray individual weeds, and only use othr chemicals when the insects or whatever are gaining an upper hand.

Comments?

 

[Nickrosis]

Ottawa sounds like our California! That kind of legislation is excessive, and I hope you're able to keep it from going into place.

I understand where they're coming from, but these people have a tendency of taking a little bit of knowledge and running in the wrong direction.

Nickrosis

 

[Stumper]

I would suggest that you emigrate but unfortunately the only options where you don't have to deal with such big brotherisms are third world nations-They have different problems.

 

[trees4life]

I think they are looking at a total ban throughout different municipalities in Ontario. I too use chemicals to 'spot weed' when hand digging has proven useless on the long rooted devils. I guess the problem stems from people that use broadcast sprays & granular stuff, that even though legal, can leach into the water systems. And consider that many people do not use them as recommended, but decide to mix it to a higher strength, it can have even more of an impact. Our water is supplied by the town through a local aquifer which collects ground water.

I don't like to see an outright ban, but I do want safe drinking water. If only people could be a little more responsible about how they use these products.

 

[xander9727]

This will be unpopular with some.

Did you ever notice that all the places you can't have guns have all the rules you can't stand?

Califruity and Canada seem to be at the top of the list.

Don't let them get away with it, liberal victories always start off small. If you give away your rights a little at a time, in a little time you'll have no rights.

This is a difficult situation. They can in no way enforce this law effectively. I feel that spending money to educate consumers via TV, radio or print would be the most effective. You can't change the hard headed ones but most people missuse products out of ignorance not apathy. If you let them know that the product is MOST effective when properly applied and that it is HARMFUL when used improperly most, I repeat most people will follow the rules. That's my two cents, fire away.

 

[Greg]

I feel for you!! I would want to see some hard data that shows the decline in water quality over the last XX years that can be directly related to those specific chemicals. I bet they can't prove it. It would be good for a lawn spraying co. to produce an ad about how the $50 per month you were paying to keep the weeds under control in your lawn will now rasie to over $150 for the 3 hrs it will take to manually pluck all of those weeds in accordance with the new rules. To me all of this speculative science that drives this stuff is pure crap.
Greg

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

In WI they have a pesticide notification registry. Anyone can get on it. All licensed companies must search the registry for houses withing one city block and call all people on that list.

It was intended to be used for adjacent properties, but the Greenies looked at the verbiage and won in court to get it interpreted as one city block in any direction. Even if that block is one mile.

You must notify the registries 12 hours prior to application, if they do not answer within somehting like tree days, you must contact the WDNR for permission.