From Boston Globe article published 8/27/24. Used by permission. See original article here.

The saga of a rich Missouri couple poisoning a neighbor’s trees to improve their ocean view is having a side effect: motivating citizen-led initiatives to restrict or ban lawn chemicals in towns all along Maine’s coast.

By Kevin Cullen Globe Staff, Updated August 27, 2024, 5:57 a.m.

CAMDEN, Maine — About three years ago, Jo-Ann Wilson was walking along the harbor here when she noticed a small sign that had been stuck in the lawn of one of the mansions that dot the shoreline.

The property owner approached her as she was reading the sign, which a landscaper had placed, warning people not to walk on the grass because it had been treated.

Wilson told the property owner the chemicals used on his lawn were bound to wash into the harbor.

The property owner, she said, wasn’t interested in a conversation.

“Mind your own business,” she said he told her, turning on his heel.

But that’s just the point, Wilson said. It is her business. It’s the business of everyone who lives and works in this quaint seaside town of 5,000. It’s the business, she said, of everyone who lives along Maine’s beautiful but environmentally vulnerable coastline.

That’s why she and others asked town officials to consider an ordinance that would place controls on pesticides and herbicides used on private property. A limited proposal that would require landscapers to list chemicals used on lawn treatments could be on November’s ballot, with more sweeping proposals later.

Camden’s is just the latest in a series of citizen-led movements in cities and towns all over Maine seeking to control the use of chemicals on private lawns and gardens. Ordinary citizens want their own local governments to take responsibility for the kind of environmental protections that historically are the purview of federal and state governments.

Maine is one of only seven states that allow local communities to pass pesticide regulations that are stricter than state or federal rules, according to the Pesticide Action Network in North America, a nonprofit that lobbies for restrictions on pesticide use. Vermont is the only other New England state that explicitly allows local control of pesticide use.

“People are interested in passing ordinances and policies to protect our children’s futures, the environment, and our planet,” said Marsha Smith, a longtime environmental activist from Camden. “Many people are realizing the dangers associated with so many poisons.”

If anyone realizes the potential dangers that unregulated use of chemicals on lawns and gardens can pose, it’s the people of Camden.

The town drew international attention this year when it sought criminal charges against wealthy seasonal residents who used an herbicide they brought from their home in Missouri to kill a neighbor’s trees to improve their water views.

While the rival property owners used lawyers to work out a settlement over the tree poisoning, town officials intervened because the chemicals used to kill the trees leached onto town property, including the town beach. The unintentional spread of the chemicals heightened awareness among town officials and residents that whatever homeowners are putting down on their lawns and gardens can seep onto neighboring property and water.

The couple who poisoned the trees eventually paid $1.7 million to clean up the mess, mostly to private contractors to repair their neighbor’s soil and replace the dead trees. But the town’s limited ability to hold them accountable led officials to ask state authorities to charge them criminally. The local district attorney declined; the attorney general’s office has not decided what to do.

Alison McKellar, a member of the Camden select board, said the tree poisoning has focused minds on the issue of chemical contamination like never before.

“Some of our greatest environmental champions are those who have moved here from someplace else and see what is special,” she said. “Some of the most difficult people are those who have lived here for generations. You can’t generalize.”

According to the Maine Pesticide Control Board, 33 of Maine’s 450 cities and towns have adopted local ordinances to control pesticide and herbicide use over the last two decades.

Those ordinances vary in scope. In Cape Elizabeth, southeast of Portland, for example, the ordinance is more aspirational, promoting the use of natural rather than synthetic pesticides, while Portland has an outright ban on synthetic substances and prohibits applying pesticides within 75 feet of bodies of water or wetlands.

Perhaps because they were so heavily involved in and appalled by the tree poisoning case, members of Camden’s select board have expressed enthusiastic support for an ordinance regulating pesticides and herbicides.

At a July meeting, Wilson urged the board to slow down the process, encouraging town officials to focus initially on educating the public about the dangers of such chemicals before putting a sweeping ordinance on a ballot. Town officials said they first want to require landscapers to disclose what chemicals they are using. That requirement could be on the ballot in November.

“If there’s a silver lining here, the whole tree-poisoning thing has shown that pesticides and herbicides just don’t stay on your lawn. They travel,” Wilson said. “We want Camden to be a model. Our long-term goal is to have a coalition, all along Penobscot Bay, to restrict pesticides, because they’re all going into the ocean.”

Company officials at Turf Doctor, the largest lawn care and pest services company in Maine, declined to be interviewed. The company’s signs dot many lawns here, and they will have to disclose what chemicals they use if the ballot initiative goes forward and is approved by voters.

Marsha Smith, who founded Citizens for a Green Camden in 2008, has helped several Midcoast communities create ordinances to control chemicals and has been advising the Camden residents’ initiative.

Smith and her group convinced the town to prohibit the use of pesticides on town property in 2008. She said it’s about time such regulation is expanded to private property, given the number of large lawns that sweep down to the coastline. She also supports Wilson’s idea of creating a regional approach to pesticide and herbicide regulation, encompassing all communities along Penobscot Bay, which comprises nearly two dozen towns along Maine’s Midcoast.

Further south, in Ogunquit, which in 2014 became the first municipality in Maine to ban certain pesticides on private property, officials are trying to expand a prohibition of nonorganic pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides.

Jessica Lee Ives and her husband, Jonathan, swim year-round in the harbor here and were appalled when they heard the herbicide used to kill the Camden trees was leaching onto Laite Beach and into the water. They have joined the residents’ initiative, hoping to educate their fellow residents to safeguard their environment and to help create an ordinance to regulate pesticides and herbicides.

“What happened to those trees was terrible,” said Jessica Lee Ives, an artist. “But let’s use that outrage to take control of our own environment. It’s up to us as a town to build on this.”

Recalling the property owner who blew her off three years ago, Wilson said she got a much better reception from a woman whose oceanfront property near the Camden Yacht Club was being treated by a landscaper in June.

“She asked me to come back with more information,” Wilson said.

The woman’s willingness to educate herself about the risks that pesticides and herbicides can pose left Wilson encouraged.

“I’m going to go back to the guy who told me to get lost,” she said. “Maybe I can get him to come around.”