Trying to Make All Local Parks Safe from Roundup
Robb Dunmore’s involvement in the Pesticide-Free Reno campaign, which has had many twists and turns, and finally few positive outcomes, began in the summer of 2015. As a high school science teacher and summer camp supervisor, he had taken a group of summer camp kids from Truckee to Idlewild Park for a picnic in Reno.
“As we were eating our sandwiches, a guy came by spraying something from a backpack,” Dunmore said. “It was pretty alarming that he was spraying so close to our kids. I felt like he was spraying whatever he was spraying directly on their sandwiches.”
Dunmore approached the man and found out that he was a city worker just doing his job spraying Roundup, a pesticide commonly used to kill weeds.
“He didn’t even have a mask on [to protect himself], so there were concerns on a lot of levels,” Dunmore said. “So after I brought the kids back to Truckee, I came back to Reno over the next couple of days and tried to figure out what was going on.”
What concerned Dunmore so much about the use of weed-killer sprays like Roundup is the presence of the chemical glyphosate, which has been found in court to be linked to the development of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Consequently, the use of weed-killers like Roundup has been banned in a number of communities across the country. So on that summer day at Idlewild Park, not only were his camp children being put at risk, but also the city worker himself because he wasn’t wearing a self-protective mask.
A California appeals court has set a June 2 hearing in the case of Dewayne “Lee” Johnson v. Monsanto, an agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901. In 2018, a unanimous jury awarded Johnson $289 million finding that not only did Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides cause Johnson to develop non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but that the company (which has since been bought by Bayer AG) also knew of the cancer risks and failed to warn Johnson.
Dunmore went on his own quest to make Reno parks free of Roundup after a worrisome 2015 picnic.
An Insufficient Pesticide-Free Program
Dunmore’s concern led him to a simple Google search of the Reno Parks District, where he came across a campaign called Pesticide-Free Parks. He wanted to learn more about the campaign, so he went to find somebody from the Reno Parks Department to talk to. It took a few tries, but eventually he was able to sit down with one of their employees who was upfront with him about the chemicals they use in their policy.
“What I found out was pretty discouraging,” Dunmore said. “The Pesticide-Free Parks program is a little bit of a falsehood in my mind. It turned out that only 12 of the 87 sites that the Reno Parks and Recreation Department manages are actually pesticide-free.”
What Dunmore noticed, however, was that the 12 designated pesticide-free parks were the smaller, less-frequently used ones in the city. To make matters worse, after speaking with the head of the Reno Parks and Recreation Department, Dunmore was told that even the 12 pesticide-free parks were still sprayed with glyphosate a few times a year. It was then Dunmore decided he had to do something.
“I got together with a couple friends that were also pretty adamant about the spraying of glyphosate in our parks,” Dunmore said. “Our main concern is [glyphosate] getting flushed down into the Truckee River, our water supply and livelihood in Reno.”
Canyon Creek Park in Ward 1 was one of the twelve parks which were touted by the city as pesticides-free in September 2015.
Reno’s Director of Parks Points to More Rain, Lack of Volunteers
According to Reno’s Director of Parks and Recreation Jaime Schroeder there can be some confusion between the application of herbicides and pesticides.
“We're still testing some alternative products like pre-emergent herbicides,” Schroeder said. “But because they are alternative products and organic controls, they have limited effectiveness.”
The official transition to pesticide-free measures announced in the fall of 2015, and implemented in 2016, also came at a time with more rain after years of drought. Consequently, Schroeder said in our interview, there was a significant increase in weeds that required attention. Additionally, he says, the city was left with less community support than hoped for.
“When this program was implemented, there were lots of promises about groups volunteering to step forward and assist with weed control at one of our 12 pesticide-free parks,” Schroeder said. “Whenever we had additional help from community service workers, we would try to use that method to be able to tackle some of the weeds. Unfortunately, we did not really get the follow-through from [volunteer groups] but the[ designated] parks went ahead and continued to stay pesticide-free.”
Speaking as a concerned citizen and a naturalist, ecologist, and science teacher, Dunmore also took his fight to City Council. He explained how the Truckee River flows from its source in Lake Tahoe all the way to Pyramid Lake, providing a vital water supply to people living in the otherwise dried-up high desert region. When chemicals like glyphosate are sprayed on our parks, they can be swept into the river by rainfall; contaminating the residents of the greater Reno area’s water supply. Since the Truckee River connects so much of our region, the problem of a contaminated waterway, Dunmore explains, spans three municipalities, two states, several counties, and hundreds of thousands of residents including the Paiute people.
A New Movement Separate from the City’s Initiative
Out of his concern for the well-being of the greater Reno community and its watershed came a Facebook group called “Pesticide-Free Reno.” Separate from the city’s Pesticide-Free Parks campaign, Dunmore’s group of advocates began speaking at city council meetings.
“We addressed our concern to the mayor and the city council,” Dunmore said. “Not with a whole lot of results but enough of a squeaky wheel to get the grease. We were granted a kind of special city council meeting with just the parks department and also the head of public works.”
Dunmore says the city council was open to hearing what they had to say. The city’s main explanation for the use of weed-killing sprays like Roundup was the limits of their budget and cuts to staffing, to the point that they don’t have the manual labor available to pull weeds.
“We suggested all the other alternative ways to deal with weeds, horticultural vinegar and steam treatments,” Dunmore said, citing strategies used by cities like Davis and Fairfield in California that have adopted pesticide-free methods.
He says they then learned from Bryan Heller, Assistant Director of Public Works, that Roundup is used by Washoe County as well, in over 1,300 locations. So Dunmore says Public Works sprays pesticides much more heavily than just in the city parks. Additionally, Dunmore says he found out local authorities had retrofitted trucks to spray weed-killers more efficiently around the 5,000 plus miles of the greater Reno area.
A screengrab for the new Facebook group after disappointment set in with the city’s effort.
Going After Pesticide Spraying Trucks
The pesticide spraying trucks Dunmore is referring to can also pose a risk to Reno residents. One of the advocates in the Facebook Pesticide-Free Reno group became involved after she says she and her dog got inadvertently sprayed directly by one of the trucks. Another resident says they got sprayed by one of the trucks while gardening outside, developing respiratory problems soon after. When incidents like that happen, Dunmore says, the city could lose more money than they are saving by creating opportunities for lawsuits.
“I think [the city is] really lucky she didn't pursue legal action and sue because she had quite the case,” Dunmore said of the gardener. “One lawsuit from something like that would negate their entire plan of pesticide spraying. A couple million dollar lawsuit would wipe out everything that they're trying to do [by saving on] the cost of pulling weeds or hiring people to do it the right way.”
According to Heller, Parks no longer uses truck-mounted sprayers. However, they still use trucks built specifically for weed application and have added cameras to the trucks for record-keeping purposes, to also verify claims made against the truck’s operators and drivers.
One positive Dunmore says that came out of their meetings with the city council was the acceptance by Heller to attend a conference in Bakersfield, CA, about the effects of glyphosate put on by the organization Moms Across America. Yet, Dunmore says he nor anyone else in the group received any follow-up or feedback from his experience at the conference.
“I think that there was some genuine concern [from the city council], but not from a standpoint of a true environmental concern or actual concern for the health of our citizens, kids, or wildlife,” Dunmore said. “I think it was more [the threat of potential lawsuits] that we brought to their attention. Our concerns were never validated and no one ever followed up with our discussions.”
Now, Dunmore and the Pesticide-Free Reno group say they have re-directed their mission.
Trying to Educate the Public Again
“We didn't want to be discouraged,” Dunmore said of the lack of progress. “So we went on to try to confront the problem in a more productive manner because we weren't getting anywhere with the city. To my knowledge today, they're spraying just as heavily as ever …”
Pesticide-Free Reno has now focused on a social campaign to educate and change public opinion on the safest methods to remove weeds.
“The root of the problem is [answering], ‘What is a weed?’” Dunmore said. “So we've done things like launch a dandelion challenge with hashtags on Facebook where people take pictures of dandelions on their lawn and #thisisnotaweed and things like that to try to more change the public opinion of what is a weed and and the health risks [of chemicals like glysophate].”
They’ve also organized Earth Day events and have approached the Washoe County School District about their use of glyphosate products on playgrounds where children play.
“We've moved on to rallying the community behind healthier options of not contaminating our world and especially our watershed with chemicals,” Dunmore said. “I [also] help run a organic garden education program for low income and underprivileged kids in our area.”
Dunmore says he finds more hope in the younger generation, and that even if the battle he is fighting for is long, he is confident his side will eventually prevail.
Confidence in the Next Generation But Worried about Homeowners
“We found that the education work that we do is more impactful to make a change for the next generations,” Dunmore said. “The older generations and some of our city leaders are stuck in their ways and are very resistant to change. But we've found younger people and people that care about their health, their family's health, and the environment are far more open to making positive change.”
In addition to educating the younger generation, the group also seeks to educate private homeowners in the area about the risks of using products like Roundup.
“[Many private homeowners] don't use the recommended guidelines on the back of the application in the first place,” Dunmore said. “Then when weeds don't respond, people normally just spray more. So a bigger problem is actually private ownership and so we are starting to focus our energy there where we could do the most good and [facilitate] the most change.”
Dunmore says they still have watchdog people making sure that when public workers are spraying that they are wearing respirators and applying it appropriately.
Their overarching goal has not changed.
“We're still fighting to this day to make a true pesticide free parks program in Reno,” Dunmore said. “Our goal was to have all of the park sites managed by Reno to use natural and organic weed control measures.”
Different groups have come into the fray of this debate, and Dunmore looks down on some of the tactics others are using.
“There was an active group before us that we are really careful not to be associated with,” Dunmore said, citing an incident in 2015 where protestors threatened to drink out of a Roundup bottle and spilled hoax substance at a city council meeting. “We want to be on the positive side of the campaign and not associate ourselves with that kind of activism.”
As it stands today, the twelve designated parks remain officially pesticide-free. The Pesticide-Free Parks program was originally implemented as a two-year trial. Their two-year evaluation determined that alternative measures simply aren’t as effective as applying pesticides. However, they decided to continue going pesticide-free in those parks. But there are no current plans to expand the program to other parks.
“The Parks Department is responsible for 87 parks, 19 school sites, 54 restrooms, 78 play structures and 34 miles of trail and 1,700 acres of open space,” Schroeder said. “We only have 35 people to do that and we're down to 22 people from the recession. So it's a very large challenge to be able to maintain everything that we do have to maintain.”
Maintenance and Renewed Hope during Coronavirus
In light of the recent shutdowns and closures due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the Parks Division is still operating as usual to maintain their parks.
“Our recreation side is shut down,” Schroeder said. “But on the Parks side, the crew is still coming to work every day and doing maintenance operations that may need to be done in order to maintain all of our parks.”
The pandemic is also allowing for a possible reset on many community challenges, so why not how we handle weeds as well?
“Nevada's been a little behind on environmental issues, but we're usually quick to follow other states like California,” Dunmore said of why he also still keeps his hopes up. “I just don't see any reason that Reno couldn't be a leader in a new green movement and really set the bar for the way we treat our water, our wildlife and the health of our community. Reno could be a shining example and then as a state, Nevada can really take the lead and has a chance to do great things on the issue.”
“It's a great goal to try to go pesticide-free in all of our parks,” Schroeder said. “It's just at this time, it’s not something that we can feasibly do and still be able to manage all of the weeds in all of the parks.”