Legislation to Watch

As I write, things are relatively quiet in New England from a government relations perspective. Couple of things worth talking about.

The City of South Portland, Maine continues in its efforts to heavily regulate the use of pesticides and fertilizers on turfgrass. On September 15, the City Council held a workshop to discuss their proposed ordinance, the result of over a year of effort on the part of the Fertilizer Committee.

The ordinance combines the pesticide ordinance already in place into a newly titled Landscape Management Ordinance and creates the Landcare Management Advisory Committee. New to the ordinance is a provision allowing for the use of chlorantraniliprole on “performance turf” every other year.

As to permissible fertilizer use on performance turf, organic sources must be prioritized but bridge products can be used if the slow release component is greater than fifty percent. For residential turf, an annual comprehensive soil test is required indicating the need for nitrogen (I guess I missed that little nugget in Doc Rosenau’s 9:05 AM soils class at Stockbridge) and only phosphatefree, water insoluble organic fertilizers can be applied.

On the flip side of this anti-agronomic morass, the Massachusetts Healthy Soils Action Plan has released a working draft that seeks to address in part the threat of climate change by utilizing urban green space as carbon sinks. It’s actually not bad. The trepidation of engaging in discussions on this topic gave way to an understanding that there was much overlap between the organizers putting together a report for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and green industry representatives. The draft report goes out of its way to single out turfgrass and best management practices:

“Encouraging wider adoption of turf best management practices is one of the most powerful ways to increase carbon sequestration rates and enhance water quality.”

Actually, when you look at the chart comparing different approaches to soil organic carbon sequestration in the report, it’s not even close – BMPs for turf are an excellent tool. The document goes out of its way to cite our own Mary Owen and Jason Lanier’s Best Management Practices for Lawn and Landscape Turf as the guiding document. Feel free to reach out to me for a copy of the report. Keep in mind that there is a bill in the Massachusetts legislature that tackles this very same subject but is not nearly as friendly to the green industry. If I were to guess, the final report, should it be adopted by EEA, would serve as a blueprint (greenprint?) for future legislation codifying the importance of soil health.

Bob Mann is Director of State and Local Government Relations for the National Association of Landscape Professionals in Fairfax, VA. Connect with Bob via email at Bob@LandscapeProfessionals.org.