FASNY: ROUNDUP AT CONSERVANCY

To:  Mayor Roach and Common Council Members,

 I know that there is a time crunch, but I would like you to seriously consider FASNY's plan to use the herbicide Roundup to remove golf course grasses so that they can implement a meadow restoration program for the Conservancy.  Why use Roundup?  Because FASNY suddenly cares for the sensibility of its neighbors and doesn't want them to have to look at black plastic to kill the grass and weeds???  Not at all.  It's because it is expedient!  Do you remember how FASNY proclaimed that they would not apply pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers to the grounds because of their concern for the environment?  How they continually bashed the Ridgeway Country Club for doing so?  FASNY says that the environment is degraded because of past practices. Yet they plan to restore it by first making it worse by using Roundup.  Does that make sense?

Roundup is known to harm humans and wildlife, and is lethal to amphibians (who breathe through their skin and are suffocated by this herbicide).  It also kills off the food supply for birds, animals and insects, and kills earthworms.  Not a very pretty picture.  Applying Roundup to the 83 acres of the Conservancy has very real consequences.  How can FASNY prevent runoff from entering the ponds or the Red Maple Swamp Wetlands?  They can't, and that is where the damage to amphibians (frogs, etc.) will occur.  In Chapter 5, Vegetation and Wildlife, of the DEIS, FASNY says the ponds contain a non-native species of large carp which can survive in oxygen poor, eutrophic water.  The absence of observation doesn't mean that other creatures don't exist in this environment.  For example, FASNY lists the animals, birds, reptiles and amphibians their surveyors found on the grounds.  They never mentioned the Great Horned Owl, which I have heard at night.  And how about those coyotes?  So I am not convinced that their lists are complete.

I have been researching Roundup, and it is truly frightening to find out that it is not at all benign or as degradable as Monsanto claims.  There are so many articles that you could spend days just reading them.  One I will refer you to is called "The Lethal Impact of Roundup on Aquatic and Terrestrial Amphibians" by Rick A. Relyea, Dept. of Biologic Sciences, U. of Pittsburgh.  An article on this abstract appeared in Conservation Magazine, a publication of the University of Washington (Seattle).  The link is: http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2008/07/common-herbicide-lethal-to-wetland-species 

What would those 18 environmentalists who signed a letter of support for FASNY because of the planned Conservancy say now?  Would their enthusiasm wane and would they tell FASNY not to treat the 83 acres with Roundup?  If they are truly environmentalists and not just a paid cheering section (do you really believe that they spontaneously came together to support FASNY?) they would not support using Roundup.
Respectfully,
Ellen Alzerez