City Council finally coming around to activist’s long fight versus toxic chemicals
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – A years-long effort to change the minds of city officials appears to finally be paying off for resident Donna Moore.
Moore has been lobbying city officials for years about eliminating toxic pesticides from the island. She has done extensive research on the dangers certain pesticides cause, written numerous, extensively detailed reports and letters to the editor of the Sentinel that could be published in scientific journals.
She has appeared before council time and again, often wearing posters warning of the types of dangerous pesticides that are detrimental to children and to animal and aquatic life when washed by rains and floodwaters into the ocean and bay surrounding this barrier island.
Moore has made consistent pleas to get the city to stop using certain pesticides on public lands, including playing fields for young people, and asking that citizens do the same for the sake of the environment.
Moore won plaudits at the first City Council meeting in October when she told council members that she would not serve on the Environmental Commission because doing so would limit her ability to speak as an individual in public comment portions of meetings.
At the Oct. 14 meeting, she used the topic of National Children’s Health Day to ask council to act.
While the city takes “comfort in safety of our island community, there is an invisible threat to our children’s safety and wellbeing. That is the island-wide usage of multiple synthetic chemical lawn pesticides on our public lands and many residential lands around the island,” she said. Moore pointed out that the 2020 public lands contract shows continued use by the city of pesticides on public lands and that commercial landscapers are doing the same on private properties.
“Children are more susceptible to the cumulative detrimental effects of pesticides due to their more surface area to body mass and their exposure with play on public lands, lawns and carpets in their houses, where pesticides may have been tracked,” she said, noting one pesticide used on public properties is a neurological toxin.
“The term weed and feed on lawn products sounds innocuous until the fine print is read about the pesticides used on the weed part. Product labels don’t tell us what scientific research is now revealing. Product safety labels are produced by the pesticides corporation.
Research tells us what we’re doing to people and Earth.”
Moore explained that “chronic exposure to pesticides is comprehensive and cumulative .… Let’s rethink what we’re doing to our island lands and choose to step away from synthetic chemical lawn pesticides.”
Later in the meeting, Councilman Jody Levchuk said he was as concerned about the issue as she was. He said he was confident some of the people who applied to be on the Environmental Commission would listen to her recommendations.
Moore thanked him for his concerns, and said after talking to members of council, she decided not to pursue serving on the commission because it could limit her expressing her concerns.
“I valued my freedom to speak here,” she said, adding, “From my previous experience on the Environmental Commission, there is a limit to what I could do then. Hopefully the commission is evolving. Meanwhile, I have preserved my independent voice and will continue to speak.”
Moore was back at last week’s City Council meeting, wearing and holding posters about the dangers of pesticides.
“In America’s Greatest Family Resort, multiple toxic lawn pesticides were applied to our public lands and youth athletic field during the 2020 season,” she said. She brought up an op-ed piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer in which a doctor praised that city for its progressive stance against toxic pesticides.
She said as the city prepared its 2021 public lands contract, council should discuss legislation banning toxic lawn pesticides from public lands.
“[The doctor] discusses scientific facts that I have been telling our Ocean City Council for years,” Moore said about the op-ed. Saying Philadelphia City Council moves in a progressive, pro-active direction with a pesticide ban for the safety and wellbeing of all of its residents, “it is time for us to take the science seriously about our toxic lawn pesticides’ detrimental effects on our residents and visitors and truly protect the people in our family resort.
“We need our own legislation to ban toxic pesticides from our public lands,” she said.
“Miss Moore comes up here every week,” Councilwoman Karen Bergman said later in last week’s meeting. “She does a lot of work on pesticides.
“We are America’s Greatest Family Resort and it would be good for us to look at ways to eliminate pesticides taking care of our lawns,” she said. Looking at administrators at the meeting, she asked, “Are we working on that? I would hope so.
“I appreciate your work,” Bergman told Moore. “I don’t have the head for it. It’s people like you who come out and do the research that can only make us as a town better. Have us move toward a pesticide-free city.”
Councilman Tom Rotundi said he would support Bergman’s measure. “I wouldn’t mind getting together with her to make the island a safer place,” he said.
Councilman Michael DeVlieger added he, too, would “jump on Karen’s bandwagon.”
“I think the next most valuable piece of land we should consider on this pesticide front is the playing fields. I don’t know if we can do all the public land at once,” he said. He attributed the value of the playing fields to the fact they are used by the city’s most valuable asset – the children of the community.
“Thank you very much for listening and for your response to pesticide use,” Moore said in public comments near the end of the meeting, “and I’m really grateful we will begin to have dialogue on how we can be America’s Greatest Healthy Family Resort.”
