The following is a letter sent on Nov. 11 to the BOS.
The Herbicide and Pesticide Study Committee recommended to the Board of Selectmen on April 17, 2018 that the Town of Granby discontinue all use of Glyphosate (Roundup).
The Town Manager’s office informed me in May 2018 that Town Manager Ward and DPW Director Kirk Severance were working on an Herbicide/Pesticide policy. I was encouraged to see that DPW did not spray Glyphosate along our roads and streams this summer.
In September 2018, I was advised by the Town Manager’s office that there was no Herbicide/Pesticide policy.
In July 2018, Monsanto was ordered to pay $289 million to a cancer patient in a highly publicized Roundup lawsuit. Every day new evidence is brought forth demonstrating the hazards of this product. More towns in Connecticut continue to ban the use of Roundup.
At the Oct. 15 BOS meeting, a resident inquired about the status of the town’s use of Glyphosate (Roundup). Town Manager Ward stated that he was not banning it but would minimize its use. He stated that this would be his policy and his directive to DPW.
The Herbicide and Pesticide Study Committee had rejected the idea of a single individual having the ability to arbitrarily decide when and where Glyphosate was to be used and had recommended a written Herbicide Policy that eliminated the use of Glyphosate.
The public has waited seven months to hear the official BOS response to the committee’s recommendations. The BOS charged the Herbicide and Pesticide Study Committee to forward a recommendation to the BOS after completion of the study, which it did. If the Town Manager has rejected this recommendation, is this the BOS’s official response?
I had hoped Granby, with our long history of protecting the environment, would be one of the first towns in Connecticut to ban the Town’s use of Glyphosate, but more than a dozen other towns in our state have already taken this critical step to protect the health of the residents and preserve the environment.