LYONS CLIMATE ACTION

CALL TO ACTION

The BCPOS Draft Plan uses herbicides as it’s main tool for managing weeds –especially Bayer/Monsanto’s Rejuvra and aerial spraying with drones. Lyons Climate Action and many other environmental groups, activists and experts in environment/ecology are asking that you vote for Jed Buckner for County Commissioner in November for a 2nd vote with Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann so they can adopt the CU Professors’ chemical free Weed Plan and Tess McDonald’s Weed Guide for 3 years until the next state required review. This plan has several viable alternatives to chemical use for weed management. There will be no public comment taken at this meeting but you can still write in your comment at the above link until Wednesday to ask the commissioners to vote with Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann and 81% of the public (according to BCPOS’s recent survey). Please show your support!

Twp commissioners decided on May 23, 2024 to adopt BCPOS’sWeed Management Plan (and it’s contents including aerial spraying with drones) Commissioner Claire Levy and Marta Loachamin voted NO for the CU Professors’ Plan and Ashley Stolzmann voted YES but needed one more vote. This is why we need to vote in Jed Buckner in November because he is an environmentalist and will vote with Ashley to change the plan in January. �

Recent History of this initiative:

For 18 months, LCA discussed the environmental and public health issues that accompany herbicide use and presented several natural options that would contribute to soil health and carbon sequestration. The expert presenters showed the county several studies on how toxic chemicals harms soil by killing necessary microbes and runs off into our water and food sources.�

Further, experts discussed how healthy soil and especially grasslands sequester carbon 300 times more than trees and must be protected, not poisoned in this climate crisis. Climate expert Hunter Lovins said that healthy soil (or regenerative agriculture and land management) is half the solution to climate change. They showed the county leaders how chemical use on our open spaces is a climate issue as well as a public health one and that the alternative methods for weed management are less expensive as well.

Despite all of this expert advice, POS wrote a Draft Weed Management Plan and added more pesticide use than the current Plan with aerial spraying by drones to apply herbicides in large quanitities as a viable method of weed management. In public meetings on the topic with POSAC and the county Commissioners, POS has referenced studies done by Bayer/Monsanto/Envu employees on how effective their product (Rejuvra) is on cheatgrass in particular. Commissioner Claire Levy read from this very study at the final hearing when she voted against the public. This includes POS’s weed specialist, who sells the herbicide used in the county, with his son (Derick Sebastian) who works for Bayer as a sales manager and is on the patent of Rejuvra. This is an experimental chemical that is not even fully registered with the EPA and the label reads that it is highly toxic to aquatic animals (including the ones in soil). Killing the biome of soil promotes more weeds and this product keeps all seeds from germinating for up to 3 years creating bare ground that is hazardous for flooding.

PLEASE VOTE FOR JED BUCKNER THIS NOVEMBER FOR A 2ND ENVIRONMENTAL VOTE WITH COUNTY COMMISSIONER ASHLEY STOLZMANN

This Summer, POS put out a survey to the public on the topic of herbicide use and 80% of the public was against any usage of toxic chemicals. You can sign up to speak in person now to get your voice heard–most powerful way is in person. Or you can speak virtually at this link. Or see below for writing in your comments which you can do even if you speak.

Please share this information with your community,�friends and social media to get folks to this public hearing!�

Learn more about chemical use and how it hurts our ecology here: See and share this short video and our campaign far and wide from PPAN.

Write the Boulder County Commissioners�at:, commissioners@bouldercounty.org; or Astolzmann@bouldercounty,org, clevy@bouldercounty.org, mloachamin@bouldercounty.org. Parks & Open Space Management is the following: jswanson@bouldercounty.org (Joe Swanson, POS Weed Manager), “Reinold, Stefan” <sreinold@bouldercounty.org> (Joe’s manager), tglowacki@bouldercounty.org (Therese Glowacki–POS Director)

A sample letter could read:�Dear Commissioners, Please stop the use of pesticides on our open spaces as it is bad for the health of people, dogs, wildlife, native plants and the soil biome. Soil health is important for sequestering carbon and is a major part of the solution for climate change. Also please discontinue Restore Colorado 22 aerial spray program permanently and all other aerial spraying in our county and adopt the Nature based Weed Management Plan and Weed Guide into policies from top experts in the field of plant and land management.

Thank you for your consideration of this important topic and I hope you will be an intregal part of this vision for a better and safer county and ultimately a better world for all.

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Recent brief history: Boulder County Open Space was to begin an aerial spray campaign called Restore Colorado 22 this Spring. They have halted this spraying until Fall pending public review in a public hearing regarding BC Parks & Open Space (BCPOS) as they update their Weed Managment Plan. Our coalition that includes several CU professors, environmental engineers, and plant specialists in permaculture wrote a Pesticide Weed Managment Plan and Weed Guide and gave these plans to BC Commissioner Claire Levy and BCPPOS management in February 2023.�

History of this initiative:�

Boulder County Parks & Open Space (BCPOS) has been dousing (by helicopter) many gallons of an herbicide called Rejuvra for 7 years to control cheatgrass on our open spaces. On October 25, 2022, The Town of Lyons (TOL) neighbors were notified by BCPOS that they would be aerial spraying the open space adjacent to our town hall and organic botanical gardens and a neighborhood (at Hall Ranch) in a few days. The towns people were very upset and even our Mayor Hollie Rogin begged the commissioners and BCPOS management not to do it and to wait until we could do a public process to figure out another way to manage the cheatgrass there. BCPOS got such a huge response from the public, that they held a town hall in Lyons where about 80 people showed up and begged the Weed Manager, Joe Swanson and his manager, Stefan Rhinhold, to please stop the spray schedule and offered to manage the weeds themselves. Many plant experts (including the woman who manages the Organic botanical gardens) and other TOL land managers and ecologists told of better ways to manage the weeds and how toxic the chemical was they were planning to spray.�

However, on November 1, 2022, BCPOS aerial sprayed adjacent to Lyons open spaces for 6 hours; starting at 7:40 a.m. when children were walking to school just 2 blocks East. A 1.5 year old boy, a few blocks North of Hall Ranch (at Apple Valley) got a rash from neck down that day and it lasted for 2 months as his Mother testified to the county commissioners several times. Doctors could find no other source of the rash. The public input portion is only until October 18th. So far, she has been the only commissioner to listen to the public on this issue.�

BCPOS are also involved in a program called Restore CO 22 to aerial spray this Bayer/Monsanto product to control cheatgrass in 3 counties (Larimer, Jefferson and Boulder).�

LCA has polled thousands of people in the county on this topic and 3200 of them signed a petition to end pesticide use on our open spaces. The leadership of BCPOS wants to continue aerial spraying as their main method for controlling weeds (as they have told us in several meetings) and have added much of this to their version of the new Weed Plan. CU Professor, Dr. Brackenridge submitted a pesticide free Weed Plan and Tess McDonald provided a chemical/pesticide free Weed Guide.

The leading cheatgrass specialist in Colorado, a CU Professor, Dr. Tim Seastead, who wrote 11 papers on the topic, is also a fire specialist working with the government to mitigate fire and write grants for fire mitigation, says “cheatgrass is not an issue on the front range and is not a fire hazard since it’s so short and burns too fast to kindle. At 2 different public events on fire, all experts agreed that cheatgrass was not a fire hazard and a poor way to utilize funds for fire mitigation. Additionally, Dr. Seastead has told BCPOS management that cheatgrass has many benefits including winter food for elk, deer and big horn sheep, (at least until May when their favorite foods come up), provides nesting for some animals, prevents erosion and has not spread in Colorado in 10 years. The Colorado Department of Agriculture agrees categorizing it as a List C species (not required to manage). Restore CO 22 program is simply wrong about their facts on cheatgrass according to Dr. Seastead, but BCPOS management will not listen to his expertise on the topic and continue to follow the non peer reviewed study from CSU with 2 Bayer employees on it, including Associate Professor Shannon Clark and Derick Sebastian. The later is the son of BCPOS’s weed specialist James Sebastian. The public has pointed out this conflict of interest to the commissioners several times in public comment over the past year.

CU Professor, Dr. Robert Brackenridge (as well as Arizona State Professor Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a leader of the Hopi tribe in the area) says that managing the population of cheatgrass on open spaces, where lands have been overgrazed or improperly grazed for decades, can be controlled by using a tractor mower twice a year (2nd time early July before it goes to seed as an annual gress). Where it’s rocky or hilly terrain, targeted goat grazing and/or controlled burns have been very successful; according to BCPOS’s own Weed Mgmt Plan. Many other municipalities use these methods successfully because it is good for the soil biom and biodiversity instead of killing all plants (and poisoning the wildlife in the name of helping them) to control only one weed–which CU professors tell us are actually beneficial. LCA director (Kathleen Sands) met with Commissioner Claire Levy early this year in January with Dr. Kotutwa Johson, Lani Malmberg of Goats Green, (to speak on the effectiveness of targeted goat grazing on cheatgrass), Dr. Peter Cowdery (chemist of 50+ years), Amanda Dumenigo of S.O.S.V.V. There we presented her with Dr. Brackenridge’s pesticide free weed management plan and all the prefered and natural methods of controlling weeds including cheatgrass. We spoke of why cheatgrass and other “non native” weeds were not always harmful and that this particular one is even beneficial to the ecology in many ways. Peter spoke of the dangers of this product Rejuvra (Indaziflam is the active ingredient) and that 80% of the product is unknown and often more toxic than the active ingredient. We asked that the commissioners stop aerial spraying and do what the public wants, that they are public servants. None of this was enough to get them to make any changes. Luckily, when Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann replaced Commissioner Matt Jones, a couple of weeks after that meeting, she put a moratorium on aerial spraying until public input could be gathered and more studies and experts could speak on the issue.

In the public hearing in the Fall, we will ask the BC Commissioners (as the governing body of POS) to end this program of aerial spraying and to use the methods that are in the Weed Management Plan we provided (and their own current integrated plan). We will continue to ask commissioners to assign a community based and appointed, expert oversight committee to BCPOS�who will ensure their compliance with their Weed Management Plan, consider in all decisions the climate and the public’s wishes and values and collaborate with the BC Sustainability Department.�

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Other Actions that can be taken to help our climate and environment:

Another thing we can do in this country is to support regenerative farming practices on the House Farm Bill and other important agriculture bills for soil health and climate solutions click here. Write your congressmen/women supporting regenerative agriculture on the Federal House Farm Bill which will be voted on soon.

Attend the Boulder County (or whatever county you reside in) Commissioners public comment hearings�1st Thursday of each month at 10:30 am (13th & Pearl St). The next one is February 2nd. You can register to speak to them know how you feel about using herbicides on the open space or just show up to support environmental causes, also zoomed.

See what else you can do to help slow climate change on our Green Solutions page and save $$ too? Read Hunter Lovins Book: A Finer Future and other climate books.

Get information about how you can get solar and go all electric in your home including electric heat and electric vehicles, please call us at 303-642-6144. We can show you how to get many rebates and tax credits to help pay for it from the Federal IRA Act�and show you how by doing this you can save hundreds of dollars a month�in electricity, natural gas/propane and car gasoline to pay for these updates as well. We have done it in our Sands’ household and so can you!�