Editor:
I am disgusted and angered at the indiscriminate spraying of glyphosate on the side of all logging roads within the Town of Ladysmith’s watershed.
Some of the spraying is being done within 300 yards of the Town boundary. Glyphosate is another name for “Roundup,” a commercial product with many uses, mainly to kill vegetation.
“Glyphosate is a herbicide that we are told is benign, but commercial glyphosate is composed of a myriad of other chemicals all with the purpose of making the herbicide more easy to use. These products are generally not placed on the label. Estimates are that over 99 per cent of the product is composed of these inert products, of which little research has been conducted,” according to Sierra Club Canada.
A new study commissioned by Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE) and GM Freeze has found that people in 18 countries across Europe have been found to have traces of glyphosate in their urine. All the volunteers who provided samples live in cities, and none had handled or used glyphosate products in the run-up to the tests.
I drove through the watershed and found roads have been sprayed, which is killing all the vegetation. The spraying is done from trucks and sprays the side of the road, including ditches, grasses and small trees.
The spraying has not stopped at small streams that flow down into Holland dam, the Town’s main water source; they just keep spraying right across these waterways.
I was in Nanaimo’s watershed yesterday, where logging is going on and found no spraying. Who has more clout, I wonder?
Keep the chemicals out of our watershed.
John T. Wilson
Ladysmith