Ontario City Applies Herbicides without Violating Year-Old Bylaw

Al Dore, Hamilton, Ontario, parks and cemeteries manager, says the city is spraying herbicides on nearly a third of its parkland this fall without violating a year-old bylaw banning cosmetic use of pesticides.

Dore says the law allows chemicals to be used when weed or insect infestations reach specified levels -- 20 percent in the case of certain sports fields and high-profile parks, 50 percent for other parks.

That's why half a dozen Weed Man trucks were spraying large areas of lawn in Gage and Montgomery parks this week with a herbicide designed to kill broadleaf weeds such as plantain and dandelions.

Gage Park, Dore said, "has lots of special events that create a lot of compacted soils, which lead to infestations, and if you don't eradicate that, there would be no actual turf, no grass."

Dore said the city has 5,000 acres of parks and open space, half in so-called manicured parks. Herbicide is being applied this fall in parkland covering about 850 acres, though he said the spray would be used only where needed in those parks.

"I can't be precise to the acre," he said. "We don't measure by the square foot and report that way. There are 149 sports fields of all different sizes, so we don't calculate the exact area."

Weed killer was used on about 815 acres last year, and Dore said that level -- about a third of all manicured parkland -- is probably typical of what's been done in recent years.

The city's website only contains information for 2001, a year it says 387 acres were sprayed. It calculates that to be 1.1 per cent of all the parks and recreational open spaces existing then, excluding golf courses. It contrasts that with 1999, when it says 7.2 per cent of recreational land was sprayed.

It's not clear what exceptions will be allowed when the province proclaims its Cosmetic Pesticides Ban Act, which will supersede the city bylaw next spring.

The Hamilton bylaw was passed last spring, with penalties delayed to September 2009, but council has said the measure will be repealed when the provincial law goes into effect.