It took years for resident Donna Moore to convince Ocean City Council and the administration to stop putting dangerous pesticides on public lands, but she finally succeeded last month.
There have been countless appearances at public comment sessions to implore council and the administration to stop using – and to have its private contractors stop using – pesticides that are dangerous to humans and wildlife and that can run off the island during rains and flooding and cause damage to life in the ocean and bay.
Moore wears signboards containing messages and had supporters hold up the placards in front of council and the administration and for members of the public to see.
She has been a quietly relentless and unfailingly polite presence at council meetings. She had written numerous long letters to the editor of her local newspaper that were probably far too detailed about chemical compositions than the average citizen would care to know. However, she was determined to show the research backing up her argument. Facts, not opinion.
It is true it would take a chemist to understand some of the detail in her letters, but when she pointed out one of the pesticides in use had key components of Agent Orange – the defoliant used during the Vietnam War and blamed for countless illnesses after the war among veterans – it didn’t take a Ph.D. in chemistry to realize there must be a better way to maintain the city’s public lands and fields.
The city administration, for its part, had been listening, and had stopped putting dangerous pesticides on eight of the city-owned fields over the past year. Moore made a compelling case about pesticides being used on fields where the island’s children play and compete in athletics.
Business Administrator George Savastano, speaking at last week’s council meeting, said the city was going to redo its contracts or write up new bid requirements – under Mayor Jay Gillian’s direction – to go organic on the rest of the city’s 30-some public lots.
He prefaced that first by saying that what the city had done in the past with pesticides was done legally and properly, then acknowledged the “legitimate concerns about the potential negative effects of pesticides.”
The larger point he made was that the city did come around to the citizens’ point of view and that it was “a testament to all of us working together.”
That has to be taken in context with both the pesticides issue and the unpleasant public back and forth last summer between the administrator, council members and citizens over a more contentious issue – flooding.
When he said the city would rather work together to accomplish things, even though it’s not as fast as people would like or to the extent they would like, he may as well have been referencing the millions of dollars spent on mitigating flooding on the island in recent years.
Like Moore, citizens concerned about ongoing flooding issues have been appearing before council relentlessly, supporting the city for all the work that has been done but lobbying hard to get more completed because they are far from satisfied and worried about their homes and property.
It is hard to have patience with the slow slog of government progress, especially when you fear every high tide and storm.
Going organic in treating the city’s lands is a far easier and cheaper fix than handling flooding on a barrier island. Given that changing directions on that pesticide issue took years, it is clear remedying the flooding issue won’t come quickly – or quickly enough to appease the residents still suffering.
We don’t expect the citizens to stop their lobbying or the administration to slow down on millions of dollars more investment in flood mitigation, but it does help to know all parties involved want the island to be a better place.