New Paltz, NY goes organic

Public spaces in New Paltz, a rural community 90 miles north of New York City, are going organic, reports the local Times Herald Record. While elimination of the use of synthetic chemicals by law must be limited to Village property, Alice Andrews, an environmental commission member and the organizer of a task force on organics that advocated the measure, "hopes that residents will follow suit and stop treating their lawns with inorganic chemicals". Andrews and other residents would have preferred legislation banning or severely restricting pesticide use for all properties in the jurisdiction, but as in most other states, pesticide pre-emption law prohibits the Village from regulating pesticides beyond its own property. "'What we've decided is to try every other angle, especially education,'" Andrews said. The task force made posters asking residents to sign a petition on myspace.com advocating that Ulster County ban pesticides. She wants the New Paltz Website to provide pesticide education, aiming for "'social pressure' to 'do what formal legislation can't.'" The New Paltz action is similar to reforms spreading in towns and cities across North America, from San Francisco's pioneering 1996 IPM program to Maine's defeat of pre-emption last year, and the even more rapid adoption of cosmetic pesticide bans from British Columbia to Nova Scotia in Canada.

http://www.panna.org/resources/panups/panup_20080703#8