Month after month, Rick Moran, the citizen member of the Environmental Committee of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, had raised the issue with his fellow committee members, district directors Margaret Bruce and Gene Ratcliffe.
Last week, he raised the issue again, and again he was outvoted: A plan endorsed 2-1 by the committee was sent on to the full water board.
To “improve the health of the [Olympia] watershed and protect its native habitat,” the proposed district plan would eradicate stubborn French broom plant thickets using the herbicide glyphosate. The 180-acre watershed, owned by the district, is located off Zayante Road in Felton.
A frustrated Moran decided to write a brief letter to the Press Banner, fewer than 100 words, asking his neighbors to come to the April 20 meeting of the water district board, to protest use of the herbicide, whose common retail version is Roundup, sold by Monsanto. In the letter, Moran called the herbicide “highly controversial.”
The Press Banner published the letter on its website on April 13, and also posted a reference to Moran’s opposition to it on its Facebook page, along with a link to a Center for Biological Diversity article that noted that the state of California on March 28 – two weeks before the committee decision by Bruce and Ratcliffe – had designated glyphosate a “known human carcinogen.”
What followed can only be described as a firestorm, at least by San Lorenzo Valley standards.
In the first day, the post was shared by more than 40 Facebook pages, reaching more than 4,000 people. It also was a topic of conversation on the Good Morning Monterey Bay talk show of KSCO in Santa Cruz hosted by Rosemary Chalmers of Ben Lomond.
On April 12, Moran wrote a detailed 750-word letter – reprinted in this week’s Press Banner and posted online earlier this week – to the full water board, laying out his case against any use of the carcinogenic herbicide by the district anywhere in the San Lorenzo River watershed. The SLV water district supplies water to nearly 8,000 homes and businesses.
“Water quality is far too important to jeopardize with an herbicide that raises this much doubt. Roundup should not be used in our watershed,“ Moran wrote. “If this plan goes through it will undermine public confidence in the water it drinks.”
Two days later, the district announced that the committee’s Olympia watershed preservation plan had been pulled from the April 20 agenda.
“Changes recently discovered in the behavior of the June beetle resulted in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requiring an additional permit to ensure protection of the beetle,” the district said in a 473-word statement posted on its website explaining why the proposed eradication plan was pulled from the agenda.
Yes, that is the same endangered beetle whose sandhill habitat requirements continue to stall construction of a new middle school in nearby Scotts Valley.
Environmental activists, including a group called the San Lorenzo Valley Watchdogs, indicated earlier this week that, agenda item or not, they would show up at the April 20 meeting to let the water district board know how they felt about using glyphosate.
The plan was not withdrawn, simply held back. And district officials gave no indication it planned to replace the herbicide plan.
One group of residents in Upper Zayante this week was preparing to mobilize community volunteers to offer to pull all 19,000 broom plant by hand.
The district reposted its position statement on the Olympia watershed plan on the Watchdog Facebook page, and the Press Banner Facebook page, and in responses to individual posts on the pages, in a unique direct public communication effort.
The district attempted to draw a distinction between spraying the controversial carcinogenic herbicide and applying it directly.
“The plan includes a combination of cutting mature plants and a one-time application by a certified expert of a small amount of diluted glyphosphate herbicide to individual French broom stumps, one at a time, using a specialized sponge applicator. There will be absolutely NO spraying of herbicide in the watershed.”
It misspelled the name of the chemical, glyphosate.
The district statement stressed that its plan “restricts, and where feasible, excludes the use of pesticides or herbicides on district land. In addition, the district supports the goal of not using herbicides or pesticides anywhere in the San Lorenzo River watershed.”
Moran isn’t buying it.
“This Invasive Broom Plan calls for applying the herbicide Roundup/Glyphosate on over 19,000 plants within a 180-acre area. That amount of herbicide doesn’t come close to not ‘minimizing its use,’ nor is it being sensitive to the public opposition of such use,” he wrote the board.
