with the infrastructure environmental management committee please come to order today is march twenty second twenty sixteen the time is about one thirty four in the afternoon please silence all cell phone to any noise making what we're talking about it's really really important to gain every day to speak directly into the microphone very clearly so you know hear what's happening in the chair excuse velo thank you folks for being here excused also as dawn boozman and counsel chair mike way will be joining us shortly from the administration and we have director good of public out on and joining us for the very first time and it's her first rodeo it is my exit executive assistant from the my office ness is joining us today for assistance and we have a lot  wonderful exciting people on the panel in front of us physically is state department transportation maintenance superintendent steve highways steve rogers thank you for being with us or and a local landscaping professional doing sparkman mr spragg thank you very much for taking your time to be here and by skype we have executive director of beyond pesticides jay feldman c e o of cutting edge formulations which is the manufacturer of vendor joe gentz cutting edge formulations stephanie nine miller will also be joining us and staff attorney for center for food safety sylvia louis eventually they will be up here on the big screen the low  clock their items we just saw one where one big item members on our agenda i am fifty two integrated pest and environmental management on county property and the committee in receipt of county communications sixteen dash thirty seven from myself ellen cochran referring the matter of the integrated pest and environmental management on county property and today we shall receive multiple presentations and discuss related issues to this i know all legislative action will be taken members a lot of information and awareness for us all to learn from and at this point i will open the floor up for testimony anyone wishing to sign up please do so at the table in our front lobby here and please please testify to the item on the agenda and let me check in with our district offices in hanada ms lono are you there ladies thank you very much and if you do get people come in for testimony please notify our our own staff here thank you ladies at this point to open up the chamber for testimony  i want to talk about true cost because i think historically true cost has been mainly about numbers and i think moving forward into a sustainable future we need to start adding in the environmental costs of what our current practices mean so i have written something out so i don't lose where i am ok when putting together cost analysis of things that utilize multiple natural resources air water land etc it becomes increasingly irresponsible to account for only the monetary cost of a procedure product moving forward into a truly sustainable future which now he has committed to through the aloha plus challenge next era merger and various other pending environmental projects we must restructure cost analysis to account for the true cost of our behavior environmental degradation must now be taken into an into account as well if moving forward using products that have been proven to be harmful to both the land and the water as well as humans and animals the cost of what those things take to recover must also be added to the monetary cost of said products when you compare pricing using true cost analysis to include these tangible and measurable factors the price of using products that are harmful to the environment becomes much greater than those which have no adverse effects to the surrounding environment people have spoken about this concept as if it were somehow less important than monetary value of the chemical in reality the only responsible reality a governing body should be concerned about is the future the future is considered equally if not more important than the presen another talks of chemicals on our roadsides in our parks and where children play and practice sports we could you bring the microphone closer  i support more moaning and the use of an organic citrus product called avenger which the state department is already switched to as you know in entire countries are banning the use or sale of ground up examples are the netherlands  because of family members members deaths attributed to round up there's a woman on the big island too is a coffee farmer and she is suing them because she believes that her husband died of cancer because of his constant long  of roundup we have a lot of endangered species here and money and they all need to be protected as well as we all need to be protected and everything we spray ends up in our rivers our oceans and our  offer when we know better we should do better thank you thank you this may be members any need for clarification of our testifier scene thank you very much for your time today any further thank you take your time don't fall and identify yourself in any organization you may be affiliated with you'll have three minutes to testify all right my name is barbara berry and i a registered voter here in haiku and i am very concerned about the amount of herbicides that are put down onto our public parks in our highways only risking my own health but the health of the environment and people that might come into contact with that since i was doing a lot of commercial landscaping in downtown seattle around the office buildings so  became edge here about how to manage a lot of these problems i was dealing with in a fashion that was you know more in alignment with taking care of the environment and not exposing people here and how easy it is to control we and manage roadsides without the wholesale spraying of the environment and and any people children pets that might come into contact with that so i strongly support a holistic approach to this problem and i know it can be done through proper mowing weed whacking  using nontoxic herbicides when a pleasurable and you know protecting the environment which is so precious to me so thank you very much and thank you for your someone else who wanted to testify yes you may approach the bench  of heart here my name is c thank you my name is sarah knight and i am a resident of markwell and i come here today thinking ellie so much for taking this as something that is absolutely crucial for our county and actually for our country and so i am really happy to see if i in support of this and really hopefully that you will take this so seriously i also come to as an educator i come to as a garden educator i come to with having worked with children and an organic gardens for many years and i know that this is a very important issue in terms of helping to teach our children and their future that they can grow up in a very fast aside free environment because there are these seeing home porton that is in the food realm and they understand that organic gardening is a healthy way for them so of course the same would be that we  environment that is also healthy for them and we know that the studies that have come out recently against cry for see as being a very powerful problem we know that the studies that have been done have been scientifically verified and so that even in the state of california they are recognizing life is see it as a probable carcinogen we know this this is not something that is questioned at this point what we need is the action that's going to go behind this information what we need is for a government to stand up to for us the children the teachers the promotion of health and wellness knight ok thank you thank you filling out the form yes you may proceed aloha my name is sonny savage laskin and this looks like just such a fabulous panel i'm really excited to start listening to what everyone has to say i just wanted to say that after i had brought and submitted and some photos of spring that i witnessed personally at haiku school and at the haiku reservoir  i went and looked on the maui county parks and rec listing and had no white that there were one hundred twenty five i sat on the computer and counted i'm up and it's really a significant amount of land that the county is managing and so i wanted to frame it in this way that for most residents on mountain county this is their point of contact with the natural world and with the biodiversity that is unique to the island and so being that it is such a powerful point of contact i'd like to just bring to the committee's attention one of the lenses that i see the world through which is as a forage or so i bring my family down to keep a nd through the seasons of time i'm watching the sea grapes you know the few speak latin scientific plant language ripen and you know there's sprayed year species that also has them at a bill qualities to it and i watch that gets prayed year after year after year in a place where it is so abundantly growing i also go to k ok a park what a fabulous dynamic interplay of you know grasslands meeting the forest and i see the incessant use of pesticides there on multiple species of wild food plants and plants so you know we've we've moved into this this idea of manicured areas are what the general public wants but i think the general public wants health and safety and so i'm really excited about a possible panel of people who can provide real solutions and are real my model for us to go by so you know and i in i also just wanted to bring up this accountability factor and it's so ingrained into our governmental structures i mean i think of p c bees and you know insurance agencies were you know required to use p c s and i've seen the infiltration of know that you know we've been lied to again and that we have an opportunity to move forward so anyways i just you know i hope that the new vision i'm hopeful where roadways and parks are kept clear through appropriate plantings and mulching techniques mechanical management and emergency application of organic pesticides will also include a shift in the language and value we put on our wild food  in these public places imagine a place where hawaiian trishna practitioners can gather food and medicine people can walk their dogs dogs at the park and have their children play without worry of exposure it is ok if it doesn't look so man healthy environment with manual clearing of trails and facilities is safe giving people a beautiful connection point with nature a place outside of their homes to connect with the natural world is satisfied that four minutes so  would like to address the hand that ms yap has given to you so one is a copy of a violation letter that was sent from department of ag to department of transportation and i am basically submitting this for the record the letter of warning mean like you mentioned from hawaii department of agnes pesticides and branch to what you department of entry into areas until sprays of dried must be made here too according to hawaii press the side of law and the violations by persons who knowingly violate any provisions of the white pesticides law may result in criminal action pursu clear that we obviously need to follow present side law to the letter and perhaps you know look for alternate means to working in our parks and roadways through that is handed the our actual legislation from other counties and these are two counties in california who have restricted the use  synthetic pesticides on county property except in cases of a public health emergency and due to the syngenta and co what you ruling it was determined that state pre amps the county on all pesticide regulations even if that is true on private property the case on appeal these are examples of other municipalities showing that county maintains the right to regulate what it does on its own property so minute irvine california both have much stricter preemption laws than we do in hawaii and have can have moved forward you know in this aspect in this respect sylvia wu who will be  introduced later will expand on this topic further during her presentation on county and state preemption item number three that was handed out is from the american academy of pediatrics policy statement on pesticides and it was just handed so let me just briefly quote something from it members and the public quote children encounter pesticides daily and have unique susceptibilities to their potential toxicity epidemiologist epidemiological evidence demonstrates associations between early life exposure to pesticides and pediatric cancers decreased cognitive function and behavioral problems recognizing and reducing problematic exposures will require attention to regulatory action on pesticides policies that promote integrated pest management will enhance fuse and quote so that kind of these three handouts that had been put on your desk and hopefully folks can get to it and read it in more detail later this time members for your information we will receive presentations from each of our panelists and then open up the floor for questions discussions after they have all concluded that way we can just kind of roll through all the information jot down knows we have hard copies of their presentations so you can make note and questions as we go that way you can refer back to them after the presentations have been done so with that i believe i relayed down our guest set the stage for us all i'm going to first turn to mr steve rogers from state department of transportation maintenance superintendent on maui highways oh mr rogers thank you so much for being with us i know you're busy man you've got a lot i was on there is it on ok so thank you the floor is yours ok without going into too much history our our move away from the use around a more or less began in two thousand and twelve when the highways department as a whole became acutely was a year while we digested what we were going to do and and now his case we decided to drastically reduce the sheer area of what we spray and where we spray which means areas of hot highway will never see herbicide again because we have to have a permit this just way too complicated to manage we we determine we'd have to stablish at a department to to manage it so we we  decided to start to improve our processes so that we didn't have to spray as much and on or trying not to ramble here but we actually had another moratorium after we restarted spraying in two thousand and thirteen because of a violation on another island and we had to fall back again and decide if we were vulnerable to that and then finally in it through all this we could see this controversy not going away in fact getting worse and that's when we made the decision to try and eliminate the use of ground zero and finally in february of twenty fifteen through actually i can't remember how we learned of avenger but we made our first order we had to modify the contract and we made our first order and since then that's actually all we've been purchasing so since february fifteenth and we've we had some start of issues with it because you use it differently than round up we have crews that have been doing things the same way for many many years and so we had some learning curve there not only that in house we've been guilty of spraying everything because it was easier we'd spray tall weeds weeds very short weeds we weed sprayed everything and it's to the consternation of a lot of the public so it's been a bit of a long road to get us out of those old habits and become more efficient and we're not done yet i'm not going to say we are for completely solve that yet because we spray miles roadway not so much as we used to but a crew does not stop moving and stand around once they spray so how do you prevent someone from come and contact with it we signage and other things can help but i'm not going to tell you we've solved that problem completely and we're still working on it as to cost i did a little look at our process our cost data i went back to two thousand and seven actually and yes avenger cost more for any given and this might be true of other products which we haven't researched yet but i looked at our history of spraying and actually our peak here instead in purchasing gallons of product was is two thousand and seven not two thousand and nine we bought five hundred sixty five gallons of a mix of round up and garland and other other products and then we had no purchases from twenty twelve to twenty fifteen but and by that time we had a big backlog of back log of weeds because we had had it more and fifteen we purchased the lowest i'm not the second lowest amount we were purchased we bought three hundred sixty gallons of product of a product that you have to use more of that kind as an indication that we figured out how to use less and  and then and as far as cost is concerned our average cost per year for herbicides in general prior to two thousand and twelve our moratorium was thirty one thousand dollars and some change a year and since then it's been twenty one thousand seven hundred dollars so we somehow managed to i sometimes can't figure it out myself how to do that but it's just through an overall change in focus to get to the personnel issues  are our personnel at first of course new things are hard but they realized this is probably safer for me and my family and everyone and they decided it wasn't such a bad idea so  they pretty much embrace for the most part and but to be to state to state it most pragmatically getting away from all the environmental issues and everything this is a very controversial issue and it's not going to go away my personal opinion much like the divakar issue didn't go away we're a small crew with a big job and we work for the public state department transportation we should not be in the controversy business and so its lowest level stripped down of all the fancy language i needed us out of that controversy so that we weren't confronted in the out on the street out on the highways with the public angry at us for doing our jobs we needed to become part of the solution not part of the problem and not being in that controversy sure feels good and yet we i'm sure we're not done with problems but i think that we are representing ourselves and where the taxpayer dollar goes more efficiently and better and just by being out of that controversy i can't tell you how many quality conversations i've had long conversations i've had with angry members of the public prior to this change and that's pretty much change now which is a good feeling i have way more details in history for anybody's interested i don't want to bore everybody with that but a lot of internal stuff that we had to go through around  s issue and other permits but that's the short version of what we're doing and mr rogers thank you very very much shouldn't be a you know getting straight great down to the point and if there's questions we shall be asking after all presenters and next then we'll be doing sparkman and he is a local landscaping professional thank you mr sparkman for being with us today thanks chere doing sparkman i moved here hundred five from texas it was really kind of my deal to come in here and i want to be an astrophysicist but realised i couldn't go visit those places and want to get up in the mountains so i actually spent my life here doing a lot of volunteer work as well as everybody here on this island it's also for the future it's very important that we do things right so that we set a precedent set a model for the people who are coming up behind us to keep that going and if not do things better moshe's certified trainer and they always tell us to do the best you can but they always do something better because that sets a better president they never will complain if you do something better they'll complain if you don't do it at all i just want to let you know i work at the westin my resort and spa i've been there for the past three years prior to that i worked for the hospital a national park for the department of interior doing restoration work as well as out plantings and maintenance prior to that i owned a landscape company and managed sixty five acres of ocean front propert s it was my my my i took it upon myself to switch over and go organic and get away from using collection many herbicides actually going routes of the people just really don't go  industry here is wrong the landscape industry here is wrong they do it wrong here and they need to start doing it right they use way too much chemicals and we need to get away from it i use composting i have gotten away from using heavy metal fertilizers they all have an impact on our environment and it's better that we use recycled goods that we can use sustainably here like now eco compost that is part of our regular recycling situation we have at the maui county facility and i greatly appreciate the fact that we're doing that i can utilize that material in my landscape because my plants will eat it and i don't have to put that out into the ocean so it's actually a really good thing so i mean really where it comes from for me is to do the best thing for the public as well as my  employees me being in a twelve acre resort i'm only twelve acres i don't have what this guy's got i don't have what you guys are up against with parks and the amount of parts you have to maintain but in my twelve acres i do what i can and i'm trying to set a precedent in the landscape industry to change the way that they do their work use less heavy metal fertilizers use less crazy chemicals those things stay in the water the last research that came out of you each proved that the life of faith or glyphosate can actually stay in salt water for three hundred ten days that's almost a year they seem to sit inside of salt water and have an adverse effect on humans any type of invertebrate fish as well as allergies a lima those are all very culturally significant as we know we're very much a malcolm a keiser society and we need to recognise that anything we do in the mountains has an effect on the ocean and we need to reconnect that in cuba stablished the best way to do this to be honest is going to be a lot more manual stuff looking at technologies also it's really about timing and paying attention to your labels labels say exactly when to spray and when not to spray the situation has to be that  organized and well thought out it can't be just o'boy squat and spray today the weather has to be taken into fact the heat has to be taken to affect the cold has to be taken to affect all of these factors are on labels of these materials and that all has to be taken into consideration when it's time to use these products i recently met with individual from syngenta and he actually said he is not a big fan of over using chemicals kind of shocking from a chemical guy but his point is you use the right amounts there's reasons why they tell you to use the right amount these plants only take up so much and then that's it so the point is don't overdose because where the overdose going it's going into our water is going into our soil and staying there for up to a year in some situations so we really really need to watch out with our protocols on a county level i'm glad the states already taken that step because as a landscape professional we have to look at the people above us and see what they're doing to try to emulate them and be better  it's kind of weird to come in from the private sector and try to tell you guys your job really it should be you guys telling us what we need to do to be honest and i was looking forward to getting more information from you guys telling us how to do our job better across the board and this is across into i'm not talking about just commercial properties a lot of it is private there is no regulation on private properties they can pour roundup right into the ground and nobody can say anything and there's nothing we can do about it so i'm not saying that we need to set legislation to stop that but i'm saying is it needs to be considered public areas public lands people using the wrong chemicals there needs to be seriously almost a moratorium on some of the chemicals we even bring on the island in reading some of the labels and some of the chemicals that the county uses for certain lawns in areas they're really used for golf course and i know you guys go to the parks and how often do you see it at golf course level i don't so i don't see the necessity to bring in certain chemicals that are hard to keep these parts of the gulf war standard they're very expensive and they're highly toxic when i first entered into the west and as a manager the first thing i did went right to my chemical storage shed and eliminated everything out of that chemical storage shed that did not need to be there are going to hawaii grow products to say what can i do with these chemicals because i don't want to know my property they came and got it and they disposed of them for ok so it's one of those things where as a conscious individual i want to try to make a change so i'm just really really glad the ellie's allowed me to have a voice in this so i think you for that and i'm really excited to see the state taken a big step to go the right direction i really hope i really hope the county can falls and i know i know it can be done it can be done so but that's all i have to say thank you and thank you for your time and willingness to come and speak to us today was just part a national grassroots membership organization based in washington d c with membership in the fifty states including hawaii and maui in our organization in advances management strategies that are not on the sides so if we could skip to the first slide please a lot of our inspiration comes from rachel carson and her landmark book silent  important point i'm not going to read all these slides to spend time but do you have a copy of them i believe yes we have grade her she is her writing is rooted in scientific understanding of biological systems that are central to sustainability and that's what i'd like to talk about today the next slide please and she gave us a couple of concepts that i think are important as elected officials think about their role or your role in this issue that we're dealing with complex biological systems and what we're using in those systems meaning pesticides have not been have only been tested against a few individual species but not against living communities and this is oh rachel carson wrote about this in terms of results in cancer is there a toxic effect genetic in reproductive facts and insect and weed resistance but most importantly reach across and give us a framework for moving off the chemical treadmill of increasing chemical dependency next  so when we're talking about a pesticide it's really important to understand that we're really talking about a formulation of chemicals that includes the active ingredient which isn't even always the per the majority of the pesticide formulation so then we also have metabolites which are and as well breakdown products that form as a result of exposure to the elements whether it's air warmer soil or living organisms next slide please so that's the basis of what we're dealing with only use the word pesticide but we also have to understand that we are as community members wholly reliant on a federal system of registering reviewing these chemicals and to understand why it's so important per local elected officials to engage on this issue you really need to look at some of the inadequacies and these aren't really inadequacies and i am identifying these are documented in worst studies reviews by the general accounting office the national county of sciences and independent studies so we have a number of key issues i'm not going to go in detail if you all of them but risk assessment of them conditional registration which means that we don't have all the data before the chemical actually comes to market your you experience in hawaii you experience the issue of experimental use then this issue of emergency exemption special local needs next slide so we could go through each one of these but the bottom line here is these are issues we all need to discussion and the community level because they raise a lot of issues around questions of our m p s pesticides and the label requirements and compliance with the label addressing the uniqueness of the island of hawaii in the values of the community the same is true when we get down to the standard of on reasonable outburst of facts that's the legal standard and so that deserves a community discussion what is reasonable for e p a may not be reasonable for our own next slide please ok so we also have a number of complexities and i think you can relate to this because you know  by eating breathing air buying different broader there are mixtures of things we're not exposed to chemical individually we're exposed to mixtures and yet we don't test chemical pesticides testing for and destruction which is a topic on to it so because these are chemicals where the dose makes them or is in theory toxic chemical exposure does not apply because we're seeing a of what we see in terms of pesticide use is is coming as a result of the u s e p a ok the department of agriculture in hawaii is the primary horseman agency but simply as the this isn't unique to hawaii but  thirty lawn care chemicals and we have citations on this sixteen of probable are possible carcinogen seventeen suspected in ukraine disruptors based on the european union review or linked to birth defects you can s i guess it's also a power point paper document you have we're trying to do a little chart here just quickly what we know about the chemicals are used by the parks department i don't have time to go through each one of these chemicals but i'd be happy to line so we we set out to look at all the scientific literature on pesticide induced diseases and we did this because there's so much in the in the literature on the relationship exposure and it's pretty frightening actually next so you know i'm not going to go with you but there are these affects we need to look at next on ok so we are constantly we're talking to local officials like yourselves we're constantly asking you as you make these decisions to do an independent assessment of whether when you look at the federal law and the state law by association whether you feel that there's adequate review pesticide and whether the label seem realistic to you the label information and whether you feel that the regulatory agencies have sufficient information or they allow for experimental or merge and see exemptions next line please so when you look at what's going on in the u s and you compare that to what's going on in europe you'll see that other countries have taken more restrictive action on chemicals and we don't and the two great examples are go where it's been classified by the international agency for research on cancer as a course in as a probable cause carcinogen and this is really destroying this classification one can get from laboratory animal testing and then we saw the suspension  and we did a little study which you can find on our web site which explains the distinctions here but again addresses next please you know so we feel that role of the local government is to incentivize the use of nontoxic systems we'd like to see this done at the federal and state level but it's really within your hands to do this especially as it pertains to you public property which is really under discussion today we are we want to sort of push back against the institutionalization of products and practice with the acceptable risk based on we've come up with a model that we think you can apply in maui and that's that's the really good news in this story that we can talk about the problems of we can also talk about solutions and the solution we have is actually  and so you you know you see the results of this we can prove quality this is stayed out of this is a study out of washington state recently published minimisation of energy increases in biographer minimizing water pollution because and this is a result i mean this is you can ask for a more beautiful playing field is this want to marvel at massachusetts where we have a very rich soil we have a high degree of organic matter we're cycling nutrients we're retain federal action and state action we really depend on you as local elected officials to really get involved in decision next  life i'm going to show the shift to what's been going on around the country it was mentioned earlier on in richmond are two really good examples of the city council coming together and having this discussion and deciding that he could manage his public lands public and private way and the rest of these slides are in communities where they're simply looking at going restrictions and maybe you know their home looking at this issue they're debating it they're discussing it and they come up defined as least toxic materials and so it really doesn't matter what words we use once which is what definitions do we bring to those words you have to be very careful with the in came up with a pretty strong definition in beauty of using the term organic is we have a very leery definition of federal law and we have an ongoing process in a single valuating new materials as they come online ere during your hearing that this is a no brainer you know we can adopt these practices so let me just next slide let me try to share with you in a minute here in addition to the growing number of communities across the country which again is on our web site and you can see i just gave you a taste of this you can see what's going on around the country next slide where trying to do with communities  is called the soil and in so doing we will evaluate how we structure program why is your practitioners the people you work with in the county carrying out a plan that focuses on soil heating the soil to the point will conduct a walk through will do the sampling issue a questionnaire to identify current practices and your expectations for the application cost of the application and in our experience most of these programs are cost compared to the existing programs that you have in place so we're not selling anything just to be really written summary of this statement with a couple of appended sees that will give you some of the history and background that in our view serves as justification for county of blue circle in the dragon fly on it and it says hone in specifically on resources available to us by we county so in particular i think that page is very beneficial to us presenter joe jan c e o cutting edge formulations which by the way is the manufacture of venger that we've been hearing a lot about this afternoon and stephanie ny miller now they do slide you're kind of going in and out so i'm not sure your audio so i'm not sure if maybe you need to be really on the microphone yeah i'm not sure because you are you are  fading in and now and also i don't know if joe has your audio his audio on and maybe it helps if that's muted sure mr nishida do you think yes ok and maybe that will help but yeah please carry sensitivities are not my concentration we have people shut down your end of the video i guess that we can free up some bandwidth on our behalf and maybe it'll clear stuff sorry i mean it's yeah i never did this before so sorry just trying to work through the kinks here not a you on line there's also this other concept of preemption which is implied fringed which just means that there is even though there's no expressed language prohibiting local regulation a course interpretation of a higher level statu provisions back and be sort of summarized into two major categories one considering pestis a disclosure notification and imposing pesticide and the other requiring any reporting on genetically engineer crops all too large scale commercial agriculture producers none of the requirements of ply to work a county did in terms of county management county property so it had no  application to whether or not the county impose any pesticide regulations on how he uses pesticides on a county lands it's also important to know that in that decision the court held that there was no federal scale commercial agriculture producers if we go from here our next life these examples of actual county regulations  thought i mean you know you would be departing and then we could take whatever about a ten minute break everyone can collect notes and thoughts and questions to get there i suppose and then come back so that's the  work out do you think mr nishida is that going to work out ok so can the participants hear me is that oh is that good maybe you folks can go and grab something from your fridge or i don't know the infrastructure environmental management committee please reconvene and we are now back from all our wonderful presentation from our visitors through skype and also here in the chamber at this point in time i will turn comments and some discussion over to the administration so i want to start off with corporation counsel ms rachelle thompson and then to parks  rec and then to public works as i understand director one could say hello will be departing in about twenty five minutes so i would like to get as much discussion as possible and ms those legal opinions and our office welcomes the opportunity to assist you as you go through it analyze this issue thank you thank you mr thompson members did you have any questions from the times in that this time ok chair members of the committee dave good here are public works director of we were before your committee about a month ago i think we talked about this issue with the department's been doing for those that missed of that just a quick summary is that we have been experimenting with a couple different products including avenger but there's others as well our tests were very and inconclusive in terms of their efficacy to basically the plants just they grew right back so we're not sure if we in any way incorrectly so we've actually been speaking with joe from a vendor yesterday we had our team talk to him and so we'll learn some more from that a word or you know we definitely want to try to do the right thing we want to try other products we're not married to one particular product changes in product use will cost money and so those funds would need to be appropriate by the council if we ever got to that point so world keep trying and hope for to working with you in the committee as you go forward thank you very much director thank you for the willingness and i guess in reference to the organic land management action plan that sort of agreement sorts that entity comes in and nope strain and you know suss out practices soil whatever have you had a chance to look at that do you think the apartment would entertain such look at it you know where instead of getting all you know as many people the knowledgeable about the subject to assist as possible so you know this is a possibility but i believe it becomes was catches and so overall gist of it is that they come in free of charge but they just want to make sure that this county is has some type of commitment and is going to want to go through with the program because they're go send in staff in and do all the training and all that stuff at their own expense so obviously they don't want to show up and then you know just have kind of a half half bought in sort of idea that that's all it is it's not but anyways again i know you just saw it but that's really the overall intent by beyond pesticides to such a program and others have taken advantage implemented it and have come out with favorable results so that's what that was about anyways ok thank you thank you members i can open the floor up to you folks to see if you have any questions or comments so remember the presenters are also actually i don't have a question but i have a comment you know this has been very interesting we've had a whole lot of information through now to us and we have facts a bit there we haven't really had a chance to take a look at so i really don't feel that i'm in a position to intelligently discuss this is afternoon so i really don't have a question i'd like to have time to sift through all this and maybe do with it later and i understand i knew this is going to be quite a lot of information handed your way and it's so by all means and again we're not taking any legislative action i mean is being forced through here i just want all of us to get information educated aware to certain practices that are being implemented rate here in here in qana poly and also here with state department of transportation and we've heard that department of public works has started to to venture and start working towards some good practices so that's what we're here for is what i saw that be on the same page which i can see we are and i'm really happy to hear the director say that you know he is open to looking  at other things in there we're doing experiments i think that's good yeah thank you very good thank you ms bi so for your comments and members any one else have any comments or any questions yes miss carballo thank you i don't have any  questions but i just want to thank you for this overview of two it is quite a lot to digest but good information because when you talk about preemption and county you can apply to other issues as well so thank you and you know just leave it up to the departments what they would like to do and what they would like to consider as far as cost see everything else  ok all right thank you very much ordered department if you did have any questions that you wanted to ask of our presenters that's that's fine too otherwise i can go to the questions that were sent to your departments and get some elaboration here on the f and then february twenty ninth or sorry march court to know we must be march february twenty ninth and it's going on here is the answer correspondence was on the ninth and response was on the twenty ninth and in reference to your response it shows you're giving the summary of what's used on sports turf in a referendum to sports turf herbicide schedule sports can you elaborate i mean i'm i'm taking it the that is strictly like ball field strictly for playing fields and our park fields and so those are those applications for the very nominal fee for anything compared to what the state uses or even with public works and also as far  ok and then i guess what confuses me is that big question wasn't asking specifically just sports park us it was all parks so that's why i feel like their response isn't complete at this point if you look at the list a chariot is all the parks not just for parts so all of our parks that actually have fields on them was the park name so for only one two and three and worst part so i don't have an exact number as far as all the other parks do have the gallons or on says that are sprayed there are come all the from my understanding from what i was told prior briefed with it was more of a touch basis  was i guess the list of pesticides use in in and around all parks and haven't really got a full full  detail list yet and then in regards to race park it's there are photos to members that go with all these this kind of line of questioning there seems to be like a drainage as we all know it's a very  big hilly park and all and it kind of all would settle down into this ditch along the highway itself and as something like that fall under needing an n p d e s permit identify exactly what i guess the question can also go to director good in regards to n p d s permits as to any of your no not for the picture director good but for your department and practices that you places that you you spray is there anything having to do around water we you know drainage and stuff do you have do you folks have a need for n p v permit to do your applications or any type of jobs that you're in your purview manager none that i'm aware of ok so currently neither departments have any need to have the n p t s permits due to the i guess the practices of your screen either department no i don't believe so you know ok and have you folks that the first item i put to this department the letter of warning that had gone to state department of transportation is this have you folks seen up before the warning letter that was given to mr rogers ye that but our practices in that part is there are two different two different categories i don't think the letter of warning was about how much your sprain and this directors maybe you can elaborate on what prompted the there actually there's actually more than one warning that we had but the one about reentry time in new york you were asking about n b c s permits ok oh well that too but i mean i think first the letter you know the year the letter the warning letter yes and i was just was my question to the department if they had seen and what how they have they adjusted their practices so i'm just now going to you since it did go to you simplify it it's when you don't want people to touch it when it's wet regardless of what it is and our warning in regards to reentry time was that as we travel down a highway and we spray say a guardrail how do we a bicyclist from coming up right behind us and coming in contact with the wet material whatever it is around and or whatever and we actually didn't have a very good answer for it because we don't post sentries and or because it's a moving operation think of a guard on the line highway and in a matter of a few minutes proper have to be forward to drive the truck and the spray equipment would be a quarter mile down the road so our response to that is not complete yet but we're going to end up having to increase our signage and and change the signage the wording on the signage to indicate that let's say someone comes out of a side street so that if they turn right in they're going down to the shoulder they'll see a sign that says herbicide spraying and they'll have to come up with the appropriate  terminology is that warns them that don't touch what's brick to not touch with spray to leave perhaps a little bit too many words on a sign for a passing motorist but not for pedestrians and that's the only way we know to control reentry time other than just not using your side because of the nature of our operations now in a park i would you know i would imagine it might be a little simpler because we don't have driving motorists we don't want to you know action so thank you very much so i guess in that example as mr rogers stated oh dr good think jerry yes since we were made aware of the letter about a month ago we actually have the department of ag and specter come to our operation is and they saw some photos with our folks in action and they were satisfied with the way that we are handling in terms of reentry because we're not generally driving a vehicle we're doing spot applications they had one caution for us in the least one of the mentioned in wearing long sleeved shirts is important know that you know it's a avenger and i think the other products as well have the exact same warnings as round up as relates to reentry for people  thirds so we're using about fifty gallons a year there we were down to sixteen and a half gallons to give some context here about thousand lane miles or road and we don't use it all along side the road mostly we use mechanical mea s but we have spot applications wrong guardrail sort of fealty signpost bridges the walls of foot controls where sun might be growing out of it and sixteen gallons over a thousand lane miles is two ounces imagine two shots sitting right here that's two ounces per mile per year so i think the department's use is incredibly small now going to another product we might use a little bit just want you know the members plow through the material that's in front of them as you keep that numbers in there in the back of their mind thanks ok thank you and  guess newsnight name miller your on line still i sure am oh ok i guess the same practice or treatment versus  to see product and your product organic product is the same though so as mr rogers said spraying you have to wait for it to draw are you i mean that's all where the labor the hardship in making sure nobody steps in it right after the trucks in the sign go away or you know so i'm trying to i referred departments say well it's basically the same practice either way whether it's a you know the chemical ok well thank you very much that's a good point in the difference so thank you for that and comments from department of think it's shared so the product data sheet you know that they publish basically is word for de same as roundup so whatever the purpose is i don't know but i do know that we're required by law to follow this so we don't have a choice of say well it's because of this or because of that the law says we have to follow the data sheets so we'll follow the data sheets you know as as required by law and go from there so i can't speculate on why this was printed up this way or what the requirements were the fact is that's how it's printed out know unfortunately you're kind of going in and out on the audio again but but thank you for your comments and so and i understand director and i believe her when here we all know that the label is the law and it needs to be followed but i guess a lot of the photos and people's comments that kind of prompted this whole discussion in order to learn and you know figaro better practices and what have you is is pointing towards that sometimes i guess the label isn't being followed so that's where the concern in this community has arisen this is where people are s where and we heard from mr rogers that it's not easy one to tackle and figure out overnight so i understand that we all want to do our best put our best foot forward to following the label because it is the law but it's unfortunate that it's i guess easier said than done and that is why we've been getting complaints and photos and e mails and what have you and videos and you name it out there that's pointing towards  practices are leaning towards you know something otherwise there's a couple and thank you director good you said that you were usage i guess i think you're speaking towards roundup in particular is very minimal or gone down because i'm just kind of glancing at your report you had given us on march fifteenth and it shows the drop in up master is at the same level and it looks like clean pro you don't really use a whole lot and being that all of these are products not to pinpoint any particular brand name or anything but i guess that meaning greedy and that a lot of people seem to have concerns about art in all of these products and so master in particular that seems to be on a steady use is used where do you do you know offhand or i'm not sure exactly where  so it's a hill and it goes down of course slope being what gravity rolls you know things roll downhill whatever is done up on the park itself would i guess seemingly flow i guess wondering if there's some type of permit or do you do you know what is sprayed there and what could possibly be flowing down into that section chair for da particular park and in general you know we don't need a permit for what we spray and based off of the letter that was given to the state after reading that briefly here as you can see in some of the photos that were submitted to submission for testimony all of our parks guys have ok thank you and i see the photos were the signs and the attire and i guess some families have seen also where spray the signs go out and as the worker sprays the end they pick of the sign to drive away which definitely most likely that whatever got sprayed wouldn't have been dried by the time they went from one end of the field to the next so i that has been a concern in this community too so there's zero way to maybe leave the signs up for x amount of time to hopefully for sure  the site shouldn't be picked up into the leaves but i do understand the concern that possibly by the time he finishes up that spray there could be sections that maybe possibly are enjoyed that time so those are things we definitely look into and then again working with the public when they see those signs up i mean obviously n and ask about your your model and you know cost wise i guess this is hone in on the money part of it the money part for me is negligible because i'm a small twelve acres  or so i mean built to offset that by planting native plants and doing less out plantings so that's actually been easy for me to switch over and go organic i do believe it's going be a little more difficult for the valley county to go that route but it becomes a situation of field feeling good about it and your employees feeling good about it so it's really something to buy into i know that it works i've used to that at the resort for the past year and i've only actually used just over a pint and a half of sky in the past year at my property so it's very little they use and actually sky only costs two dollars more per two and a half gallon container so again round up so it's only a two dollars more increase per to an afghan and yes there might have to be extra staff to go back to use those comments mr sparkman it and you know just you're a living example of how changes have happened and as you say i know it doesn't compare to the state or county level scope but yet it is still an example and i don't like i don't want to minimize you and your efforts whatsoever it's about taking the first step right there you go thank you so much so i think we're going to be losing a few people here and in that sense we also be losing quorum folks so unfortunately we will need to be closing out this meeting needless it's definitely not the end of the discussion with this subject but this is just been the first introduction just to get all of us on the same page and to be educated ambra awareness to and i just want to faint the efforts on the department's back have to be here to want to you know learn to along with us all that's what we're here for to work together in a positive manner forward from here on out and that's going to take a lot of openness though and working with and definitely figuring out how we can adjust things and redo if be budgets around the corner so by all means if there's things that need to be done in a budgetary sense we can hopefully work towards that and come up with some solutions and i want to thank especially our our people from across the united states chime in with us today really appreciate your expertise that you brought here to the table and i hope that we can call on you again to to help us along and educated this and obviously you heard from director of public works we can look into this program that beyond the size is willing to work with  on your behalf so definitely appreciate you reaching out to the different municipalities that way members any final closing comments or questions needed ok will see and thank you staff and especially thank you