The Petaluma Community Guild’s public forum — Glyphosate: Health Impacts and Green Alternatives — that took place at the Petaluma Seed Bank on March 9 was a big success.
We had a full crowd on hand to discuss the health impacts of glyphosate (commonly sold in the form of Roundup), to learn about greener weed control alternatives, and to talk about the Petaluma Community Guild’s proposed moratorium on glyphosate use in Petaluma’s parks and other public right of way spaces.
A big thanks to our speakers — Ella Teevan (Food & Water Watch), Wendy Krupnick (SRJC Sustainable Agriculture Program), and Petaluma Community Guild President, Tiffany Renée, and to the Seed Bank for hosting us.
The next big action in our campaign to institute the moratorium is to show up in force wearing white shirts at Petaluma City Hall (11 English Street) at 7pm on March 21 for the next Petaluma City Council meeting — to stand in solidarity with us as we urge the Council to place our proposed moratorium on a future Council Agenda, for formal discussion.
Adopt a Park or Greenspace
We are collecting volunteers to adopt a Petaluma Park or Greenspace. A big component of getting the moratorium passed will be to have neighbors step up to do a bit of weeding in their neighborhood public spaces. Please send an email to volunteer an hour of your time to this. Many parks have been adopted and have fun, community-building clean-up days. Email: president@petalumagrange.com to sign-up. We will present this list to the City Council.
Resources
A lot of resources and information about glyphosate use in California, Sonoma County, and Petaluma — and Wendy gave a great, visual presentation of greener weed control solutions. Here’s a working list of the links, resources, and visuals shared on March 9.
From Tiffany, the charts in these slides illustrate the amount of glyphosate use by the City of Petaluma in our public rights of way, parks, and wetlands (2011-2015) — as well as amounts used by the County of Sonoma in County public rights of way, parks, wetlands, and in agricultural or landscaping (see the slides on Slideshare).
And here’s Wendy’s slide presentation on green weed control alternatives (see the slides on Slideshare):
And then some of the resources that Ella mentioned, about glyphosate and GMOs
Food & Water Watch blog on the dangers of glyphosate