PLEASE COMMENT on the County’s new vegetation management (with herbicides!) plan.

Nov 28, 2016 — In spite of the widespread opposition, and ongoing delegations to the County – Council has confirmed that they will be moving forward in 2017 with herbicide spraying to control wild parsnip.

We believe this approach is ineffective for many reasons. Just one being that wild parsnip can not be controlled this way.

These photos, taken by Lanark County residents this past summer, show cedar trees sprayed along Bennett Lake Road.

The good news is that Council is considering adopting a new vegetation management plan that includes other methods and does not focus entirely on herbicides.

We have another opportunity to act.

On December 7th, the County council will vote on whether to implement a bylaw (!) that will commit us to a multi-year IPM Vegetation Management Plan that has herbicide spraying as an integral component, rather than a last resort.

Please read the plan, ask your questions, express your concern, opinion, opposition, whatever it might be.

There is still time to have this set aside for further review.

The County Council wants to hear from it’s residents. It is how they make decisions (we hope). Two councillors from each township or town sit on the County Council. The full list of Councillors and their emails can be found here.

To ensure your correspondence is recorded, please copy the County Clerk Leslie Drynan and Chief Admistrative Officer Kurt Greaves.

Please note, the plan this year is to use another product called Truvist. We have also learned that a highly toxic adjuvant, called Gateway is used to increase the effectiveness of ClearView and was used in 2016. See here for more info.

To read some Lanark resident’s letters and presentations made to council, see here.