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Friday, February 10, 2012
Fremont Park to become greener, harder to maintain
by Kathleen Haley, published on August 4, 2009 at 7:36 PM
Storyline: Sacramento City Hall / Politics
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Fremont Park will become greener, but its upkeep will also be more difficult. That’s the trade-off that volunteers and local anti-pesticide activists are accepting in order to turn the Midtown park, at 16th and Q streets, into the city’s first pesticide-free park.
City Councilman Rob Fong, the Pesticide-Free Sacramento group and the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation organized the new 2-year pilot program at Fremont Park to use green techniques, instead of pesticides, to destroy weeds. The organizers promoted the program at a press conference Tuesday. If the pesticide-free program is successful, the city hopes to expand it to other parks, Fong said.
The Fremont Park program shows “the city’s commitment to trying to be sustainable in all its practices,” Fong said.
The city’s Parks and Recreation Department, which was hurt by $8.3 million in recent budget cuts, will rely on volunteers to maintain the park using green practices, according to Parks and Recreation Director Jim Combs.
“We’re not going to be using pesticides here,” Combs said at a Tuesday press conference at Fremont Park. “We’re going to be doing a lot of extra hand-work.”
The additional work it will take to maintain the park without pesticides could not be conducted by city Parks and Recreation staffers because of budget cuts, according to Combs. Because volunteers will carry out maintenance tasks at the park and Pesticide-Free Sacramento will provide expertise, the program will not bring any new costs to the Parks and Recreation Department, he noted.
The program will be assessed qualitatively and quantitatively, Combs said.
The city uses a minimal amount of pesticides because “we know that it’s not healthy for our environment,” Combs said. Pesticides leach through the soil and end up in water systems, he said.
Amy Barden, coordinator of Pesticide-Free Sacramento, said that Fremont Park has been maintained without the use of synthetic pesticides since early spring of this year. The group aims to lower, and work toward ending, the use of pesticides in local parks, neighborhoods, schools and workplaces, Barden said.
“The successful maintenance of Fremont will demonstrate that organically maintained landscape can be not only safer for ourselves and our children, but also beautiful and environmentally healthy,” she said.
Lizz Lagomarsino, a representative of Friends of Fremont Park, noted that the group’s members volunteer a lot of their time to cleaning up the park.
Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.
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Cheers,
Kathleen
We are hoping that the "hand-work" that Director Combs referred to mostly comes in the form of weed whacking, edging, and raking mulch around trees -- some of which maintenance crews were routinely doing in this and other parks in the recent past -- rather than hand weeding on hands and knees. Because there are very few landscape beds/planters in Fremont Park, there should be very little need for that kind of intensive hand-weeding.
Also, the Parks Department has agreed to maintain Fremont at the same level as other parks in the City Parks system. At this time of budget cuts, this might mean that ALL parks need more volunteers to maintain their general appearance in the next year or two, not just Fremont Park. George J. is correct that our goal is that as weeds get smothered by mulch and healthy grass, Fremont Park will require less weed-eradication measures in the long run.
Amy Barden
Coordinator, Pesticide-Free Sacramento
Altering a few management practices at the park can dramatically reduce weed problems and the need for hand-work. Mulching tree wells and planter beds, raising the mowing height, lawn aeration, overseeding the lawn in spring and fall, regular applications of organic fertilizers and compost and instructing park ranger to keep their vehicles off the lawns will go along way to prevent weeds. These practices should not require more funding then traditional maintenance practices, since you no longer need to purchase and apply toxic pesticides or spend funding on required pesticide applicator licensing, continuing education and insurance. Start up costs might be a little higher for organic landscape maintenance (i.e., mulch cost, purchase of flame and mechanical weeders, and eco-friendly weed killers) but in time the costs should actually be less then conventional practices. Factor in the environmental and health costs associated with pesticide applications (that are incurred by other governmental and public institutions) and it certainly is less expensive.
Organic pest management should take about the same amount of time as pesticides when you factor in the time required to purchase and apply pesticides, conduct the required pesticide training of employees and record keeping of pesticide applications. Once a totally organic landscape maintenance program is in place (when funding returns to the Parks Department) there should be very few weed problems and the time and expense of pest management will drop dramatically. Any additional labor required in the short term well result from the Parks Department’s lack of funding and not the switch to organic practices.
Steven Zien, Living Resources Company, Organic Horticultural Professionals