Health Board Against Herbicide Spraying But Hands Are Tied

by William F. Galvin

            HARWICH – While the board of health is not happy about the proposed use of herbicides to knockdown vegetative growth along power line rights of way, there is nothing they can do to prevent it.

            “I’d like to make a strong statement against using herbicides,” Board of Health member Dr. Alfred Hurst said last week during a discussion on a proposal by NSTAR to use chemicals in Harwich this spring.

            Selectmen are scheduled on Monday, March 15 to hold a public meeting with NSTAR officials to discuss vegetation management contained in the company’s yearly operational plan. A petition has been circulating around town protesting the planned spraying.  

“It’s group psychotherapy, because they are going to do it anyway,” Hurst said of the meeting. The state Supreme Judicial Court decision in the town of Wendell V. Attorney General in 1985 determined local bylaws and health regulations that frustrate state legislative purposes are invalid.

In that case, the Attorney General disapproved a bylaw approved by town meeting in Wendell that would have given the board of health the authority to regulate the application of pesticides other than for agricultural and domestic uses.

The court upheld the Attorney General’s decision because the bylaw would have allowed decisions on the local level that the Legislature had committed to a state agency when approving the Massachusetts Pesticide Control Act in 1978.

Hurst said Mexico and Canada were successful in stopping the United States government from spraying these chemicals along their borders, but the board of health can’t stop it in their own town.

Health Department Director Paula Champagne said the board is opposed to the spraying, but they realize it is out of local jurisdiction. The board still wants every possible precaution taken.

The board hopes to use this opportunity to raise the issue of use of pesticides as a whole. She said one of the fastest growing industries in the country is the lawn care business. Champagne said individuals buy chemicals at lawn care centers all the time, the same chemical that is used in de-weeding in the three-step lawn care applications.

There were vocal protests in the 1980s over the same issues, Champagne said. The board of health sought to put in bylaws, but the town of Wendell decision overturned those efforts. There were massive amounts of energy, information and education at that time.

“We need to re-energize that on all aspects of pesticide and chemical use,” Champagne said. “It’s a new generation.”  

The public hearing is scheduled as part of the board of selectmen’s meeting on Monday, March 15 at 7 p.m. in the hearing room at town hall.

3/11/10