ROCKPORT — Members of the Rockport Conservation Commission will be spending the winter collecting educational materials and scheduling public presentations to address herbicide and pesticide use in the town. They want to see the chemical readings in runoff diminish in all areas of town.

Commission members have already met with landscapers in Rockport, as well as golf course groundskeepers, who all report minimal pesticide use. That lead to the conclusion that contaminants leaking into watersheds are the result of individual property owners applying their own chemicals.

“This is the father who is buying Round Up and ignoring the directions,” George Haselton, said at the Conservation Commission’s Sept. 2 meeting at the Rockport Town Office.

The growth of suburbia in the U.S. has increased lawn care expectations; in turn, property owners are dumping chemicals onto vegetation without concern for future repercussions, Conservation Commission members acknowledged.

They want to initiate education in town about reducing herbicide and pesticide use, and intend to begin before next spring. 

Some on the commission question why anyone bothers buying pesticides at all. Fred Ribeck uses a home spray-bottle mixture of one gallon of vinegar, one cup of salt, and one tablespoon of liquid dish soap, which he applies to weeds on a sunny day.

“It doesn’t kill the weed seeds, but does good job on killing the actual vegetation,” he said. “Not as powerful as Round Up but my wife and I are happy with it,” Ribeck wrote in an email.