The Almanac
Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside
A grassroots environmental coalition has launched a petition urging San Mateo County to do away with the use of toxic chemicals as a strategy for vegetation control.
The local groups Protect Our Watershed San Mateo County and El Granada Advocates teamed up with nationwide organization Non-Toxic Neighborhoods to craft the petition, which they plan to send to the county Board of Supervisors.
The petition comes amid the groups’ concerns about increased pesticide or herbicide spraying by the county because of the overgrowth of weeds and other unwanted vegetation due to the amount of rain that fell over the winter and spring.
“In years of more rainfall, we tend to see more spraying,” said La Honda resident Patty Mayall, director of Protect Our Watershed, “and this is one reason we will keep gathering signatures on our petition.”
About 120 individuals and groups have so far signed the petition, according to El Granada Advocates co-founder Melinda MacNaughton. More signatures are expected to come in over the next several weeks.
“We continue to ask questions about what the county is willing to do,” MacNaughton said, “and our latest ask is a moratorium on the very toxic pesticides we have found they are using based on pulling public records.”
In broad terms, pesticides include herbicides and insecticides. Pesticides kill or control animals and plants considered damaging or a nuisance in the agriculture industry and domestic life.
In their petition, the groups took issue with the county continuing to use pesticides for vegetation management on public lands and parks, including glyphosate-based products such as Roundup ProMax.
“Spraying occurs throughout the year,” the petition said, “and records show the use of glyphosate on specific weeds, which are then left on the land.”
Some environmental and health organizations, including Non-Toxic Neighborhoods, have argued that glyphosate is a cancer-causing carcinogen, and over the past decade, lawsuits have targeted Roundup with claims that plaintiffs were not warned about regular exposure potentially leading to severe health problems such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s underlying scientific findings have determined that glyphosate poses no health risks when used according to label instructions, the federal department said on its website. “EPA also found that glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen.”
But in their petition, Protect Our Watershed and its partners maintained that the pesticide spraying poses a clear danger to public health and the environment.
It leads to the “potential contamination of soil, watersheds and the health of our very sensitive ecosystems,” the petition said, imploring the county “to transition off the continual use of hazardous pesticides and to use effective, safer alternatives.”
The pesticides can also contain other highly toxic substances such as POEA and PFAS, MacNaughton said.
Alternatives to pesticides include the use of organic products, regenerative land practices and the mechanical removal of weeds, environmental groups say.
One spraying incident in La Honda earlier in the year caught the attention of Mayall and other local residents. They described what happened as broadcast spraying at the county Public Works Department’s La Honda Corporation Yard maintenance facility, 59 Entrada Way.
Broadcast spraying is the application of herbicide uniformly over a large area. In 2012, the county already banned that kind of spraying on land it owns except for its airports in San Carlos and Half Moon Bay.
But it was “obvious” that broadcast spraying did occur at the county facility in La Honda, said Mayall, who has long fought for the end of pesticide application in the county. Signs of broadcast spraying usually appear three to five days after application and include a noticeable swath of brown, dead vegetation.
The area had seen a lot of rain, Mayall also said, “so we were very concerned about runoff (given that) the Corporation Yard is next to La Honda Creek and residents downstream use it for water.”
County Public Works Director Ann Stillman confirmed to The Almanac that spraying indeed transpired there Feb. 6 with Roundup ProMax. It was “to control weeds and vegetation on a slope on county-owned property,” Stillman said.
But the concerns raised by residents have prompted her department to revisit county regulations regarding vegetation management and herbicide use, she said.
The county would consider other measures at the La Honda facility for vegetation control and wildfire prevention, she said.
In a separate email to Mayall and others, Stillman said she directed her staff to stop spraying the area with any product similar to Roundup ProMax.
“We will be exploring alternatives that would be effective in eliminating or minimizing the weeds in this area going forward,” she said in that email.
In the email to this publication, she said the current county protocol is to not use herbicides for roadside vegetation management and instead mow unless spot spraying of invasive plant species is necessary.
“The county uses mechanical mowing along county roads to minimize fire hazards along the edges of roads and to maintain sight distance and visibility for road users,” Stillman added. “The heavy rain years have increased the amount of vegetation and regrowth of vegetation, which means that our department has had to mow certain areas more than once per season to help control the vegetation.”
The county’s Integrated Pest Management Policy also emphasizes applying non-pesticide options or the least-toxic chemicals where feasible and practical, she said.
The link to the environmental groups’ petition at tinyurl.com/ProtectOurWatershedpetition.
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