HILO, Hawaii – The Hawaii County Council will consider a bill next week that will ban certain pesticides from being sprayed on government grounds.

Bill 71, introduced by Kohala councilwoman Margaret Wille, “prohibits toxic herbicides in all County owned or maintained public parks and along all County owned or maintained roads, bikeways, sidewalks, trails, and waterways.”

The Council Committee on Environmental Management will hold a hearing on the bill during its 2:30 p.m. meeting on Tuesday, August 4th in Hilo.

According to Wille:

“At the Council’s May 2015 hearings for our County 2015 -2016 budget, the line items of greatest concern were that “Roundup” spray line items in the several department budgets, including those of Parks & Recreation and Public Works. At that time I promised to draft a bill to address the community’s concerns. As drafted this bill would prohibit the use of toxic herbicides, such as those containing glyphosate (Monsanto’s “Roundup”), on County owned and maintained parks, roadways, waterways, and other county spaces. The World Health Organization and other health organizations have recently brought forth more evidence concerning the negative effects of glyphosate on human health and to the environment. In my opinion it would be irresponsible to continue to ignore the cries of so many to find alternative means to deal with weeds that are less harmful to our people. To instead simply do another study or to only undertake some pilot project would be doing next to nothing. The proposed bill has an effective date of July 1, 2016 to allow time for the County to transition to alternative means of weed control.” – Margaret Wille

Here is the language of the proposed Bill 71: