The chief author of this commentary is Sylvia Knight of Burlington, an earth community advocate and researcher.
What do you care about most dearly? Your children? Your grandchildren? The world they will inherit? The water we all need for life?
All of these are harmed by over 1 million pounds of toxic pesticides used in Vermont every year. We can no longer depend on the state to protect us, the land, water, and future generations.
In 1970, Vermont’s Legislature responded to rising concerns (remember Rachel Carson?) about toxic pesticides and their effects on life on Earth by passing laws requiring pesticide reduction. The law established the Vermont Pesticide Advisory Council to develop policies to reduce pesticide use. What happened? Read on.
In August 1995, concerned citizens learned that the Pesticide Advisory Council had issued a hasty permit to forest products company Champion International to spray toxins over Northeast Kingdom forests. The grassroots VT Citizens Forest Roundtable researched the herbicides and organized forums around the Northeast to educate communities and to challenge the permit.
For two years, they campaigned to ban the spraying of toxins over the forests of northeastern Vermont, the headwaters of the Connecticut River.
In 1997, the Legislature heard us and passed a moratorium on broadcast herbicide applications over the forests of Vermont. The people’s call for pesticide reduction won the day. Champion International sold its forests and moved south.
In 2005, citizens presented an alternative to the Pesticide Advisory Council for controlling regrowth of stems under electric power lines, a major use of herbicides. Central Vermont Public Service, an electric utility, got an “experimental use permit” to use a Canadian nontoxic product on a small section of its right-of-way in Stockbridge, Vermont. It was successful!
A similar product is now available from Canada, but “experimental use permits” are actually discouraged by Vermont Regulations to Control Pesticides approved in 2022.
In 2005-06 a citizen member of the Pesticide Advisory Council worked with Vermont rail systems managers to study how some of their regular management practices — other than herbicides — actually helped control vegetation, and to create a vegetation management plan to reduce pesticides. It was voluntary, and lasted until 2011.
Vegetation management plans now held by Vermont Railway and New England Central Railroad do not appear to influence their herbicide use. Treatment areas for all railroads in Vermont increased by 20% in 2018, increasing herbicide use even as the law requiring pesticide reduction was still in effect.
Pesticide use in streams and lakes was not under the Pesticide Advisory Council’s purview and has increased; until just recently, state agencies have promoted ProcellaCOR, contaminated with toluene, an endocrine disrupting product of the petroleum industry, to control milfoil in lakes.
Who is guarding Earth’s water from toxins?
The Vermont Pesticide Advisory Council was unable to achieve its mandate of reducing pesticide use, partly because the council worked within the Agency of Agriculture, partly because of its structure and rules, and, arguably, partly because of a conflict of interest between the agency’s incompatible functions.
Over 1 million pounds of pesticides have been used almost every year in Vermont since 2010. (Data prior to 2010 are no longer available on the agency website.)
In 2021, the very largest use in limestone slurry and industrial cooling towers was 654,000 pounds of pesticide active ingredients. Conventional dairy consumed nearly 250,000 pounds; golf courses, almost 31,000 pounds; landscaping, about 13,500 pounds. Utilities, highways and airport treatments used about 58,000 pounds. Water is contaminated. Pollinators are suffering. Vermont is awash in pesticides.
In 2021, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets created the Agriculture Innovation Board to discuss farm issues and practices. When the Legislature approved the innovation board in 2021, it repealed 6 VSA section 1102 requiring pesticide reduction. Fifty years of legislative intent to reduce pesticides disappeared without public discussion. How did that happen?
The Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets never established benchmarks determining increases in areas treated with nontoxic alternatives and determining decreases in areas treated with toxins. The state Department of Health and Agency of Natural Resources have contributed to increased pesticide use by approving toxins for use in waterways even as we learn of PFAS contamination in pesticides.
After we, the undersigned, learned that six insecticides used in Vermont are significantly contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, or forever chemicals), we urged Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts to remove them from use in Vermont. Despite his authority by rule to do so, he refuses to prevent their use.
Now, in the absence of state leadership to protect Vermont lands, public health, wildlife and water from toxins, Vermont Pesticide and Poison Action Network declares a new people’s mandate and calls on Vermonters to help us create a state that is safe and healthy for all children and for the seventh generation. Please contact us at vt.papan@gmail.com.
Signing this commentary were Marguerite Adelman, Vermont PFAS/Military Poisons Coalition, Winooski; Pam Ladds, Newport; Frankie Liza Nanni, Winooski; Christine Anderson, Manchester; Emily Lanxner, Pollinator Survival, Hardwick; James Ehlers, Lake Champlain International; and Michael Bald of Got Weeds? in Royalton.
