This is the outfield at Bergen County Community College, a field maintained without pesticides. If you’d like to have the playing fields at H.B. Whitehorne, Verona High School and Linn Drive looking this way, you can sign a new petition created by the Verona Environmental Commission. (Full disclosure: I’ve been a VEC member since 2009.)
In the petition, the VEC asks the Town Council and Board of Education to ban the use of toxic synthetic lawn pesticides on all school grounds and public sport fields where children play. Synthetic pesticides can cause cancer, learning disabilities, asthma, birth defects and reproductive problems. To read and sign this petition please click here: Verona-NJ Safe Playing Fields. The VEC will also be collecting signatures at Fair In The Square this Saturday.
Playing fields can be maintained without pesticides, and organic care is no more expensive. No pesticides are used on Verona Park or at our four public elementary schools. Learn more on the VEC’s Web site.
We have a field behind the high school which has already attempted to swallow a student and a public employee, which is made from fill from an industrial site which may or may not be contaminated, and which is now closed indefinitely.
One might expect that possibly contaminated landfill on school fields, landfill which also drains to the Peckman through another school property, would be a higher child safety priority for the VEC. But it’s not.
I appreciate the work of the good people of the VEC, who have done great work in a number of areas including the Peckman and education of our community on very important environmental issues. But on the issue of the safety of our playing fields, they can’t see the forest for the trees.
Richard, the VEC takes the Sellitto Field matter seriously and we discussed it at length during our public meetings. Our Chairman, Mr. Shimonaski attends all BOE and Town Council meetings. That field had been closed to all activities and solutions are being worked on by the BOE and town.
Thank you Gloria. It is heartening to know that this is on the radar of the VEC. That soil drains onto the lower field, which is heavily used by youth athletics. When we get heavy rain, it also drains through the F.N. Brown parking lot onto the fields/playground behind that school.
I know, I live at the bottom of a hill. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whether it falls in a minute or an hour, a tenth of an inch of rain can create significant pesticide runoff.
That’s certainly a good reason to carefully consider where and how pesticides are used in the future. My worry is that the materials already in the soil, which is evidently industrial fill, may pose a hazard much greater than pesticides