Recently, advisory signs by the Salt Lake City Parks Department indicated that both the Avenues cemetery and numerous city parks have been sprayed with chemical herbicides. Why? To “control” weeds, to satisfy a certain cosmetic preference, not to save a food crop or meet any other demonstrable necessity. “Weeds,” plants like dandelions and clover that are not only harmless, but ecologically highly beneficial, against which the chemical industry has successfully waged a decades-long vilification campaign. It is unbearably offensive to have toxic chemicals sprayed on what is, to me and perhaps most people with departed loved ones buried in the cemetery, sacred ground (to say nothing of the harm to the living — human, pet, and wild — who jog, walk, cycle, meditate, etc. in the cemetery). It is highly frustrating that this needless, harmful practice underwritten by our taxes, is the Parks Department’s default that apparently needn’t justify itself.
While one branch of the city government sprays toxic chemicals, another one — the Sustainability Division — has launched a laudable campaign called “Pesticide-Free Yards,” which encourages city residents to pledge to forswear chemicals in their own properties, and also includes a pilot organic management program at Laird and Madsen parks. While highly encouraging, there is an urgency to halting chemical applications much more broadly and quickly, for protection of human and ecological health. Rather than slowly phase in organic practices, I urge the reverse, namely, making organic management the city’s official modus operandi, starting now.
Jon Jensen, Salt Lake City