Letter: Keep herbicides out of Little Compton solar farms

Posted 3/19/19

To the editor

Little Compton has the right to include in its Solar Ordinance the phrase “No herbicides shall be used to clear or maintain the area beneath the solar panels”. At the town’s …

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Letter: Keep herbicides out of Little Compton solar farms

Posted

To the editor

Little Compton has the right to include in its Solar Ordinance the phrase “No herbicides shall be used to clear or maintain the area beneath the solar panels”. At the town’s public hearing on March 14 it was proposed by a townsperson to remove this phrase from the draft ordinance and we were informed by the council that the town had received, on the same day, a letter from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) warning the town not to regulate herbicides under solar panels.

By including the herbicide restriction, the town was following clear guidelines from the RI Division of Statewide Planning (Renewable Energy Guidelines final document Feb. 21, 2019, to be found at www.energy.ri.gov that a) towns may write their own solar ordinances, and b) in regard to herbicides “Solar energy systems shall be constructed and maintained in a way that minimizes the use of herbicides and pesticides” (page 18 of the Guidelines report).

The report also says on page 18 that “Any potential impacts to water quality and/or wetlands should be addressed through the required State permits of the Department of Environmental Management (DEM) for wetlands and the Rhode Island Pollution Discharge Elimination System (RIPDES) for storm water.”

The DEM has a questionable track record of protecting our water from herbicides, witness the GM corn crops grown throughout Little Compton where we all extract our drinking water from wells. GM crops are sprayed with Roundup containing glyphosate which the World Health Organization has found to be probably carcinogenic, and with atrazine which the European Union has banned because it builds up in ground water and is a potent endocrine disruptor (it transforms male frogs into females, reference Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 107, page 4612, 2010). Glyphosate use has peaked because plants are becoming resistant to it, and it appears that the older chemical atrazine continues to be used at the same level as it had been before glyphosate was introduced to supposedly make herbicides safer. This is not to say that we should give in to the chemical industry and have piped water – merely to say that we should demand to have free clean water in Little Compton, of the best possible purity.

Now would be a good time to keep the disputed herbicide phrase in the Little Compton solar ordinance, as we have the right to do, if only to establish what we expect as a town from prospective solar builders, and to protect ourselves.

Malcolm McGeoch

Little Compton

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