Two more city parks go pesticide-free

Northwest environmental coalition presses city to expand program

By Peter Korn

The Portland Tribune, Oct 2, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

A pesticide-free park sign at Sewallcrest Park in Southeast Portland.

Courtesy of Portland Family Adventures

Nobody ever said sustainability came easy.

Take parks. Under prodding from Eugene’s Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, Portland Parks and Recreation four years ago started a pilot program to make three city parks pesticide-free. This week, parks and recreation added two new neighborhood parks to the list.

The original three pesticide-free parks were Lair Hill in Southwest Portland, Sewallcrest in Southeast Portland and Arbor Lodge in North Portland. Newly added to the list are Hillside Park in Northwest Portland and Midland Park in Southeast Portland.

The city is able to keep these parks pesticide-free through the use of coalition volunteers. The nonprofit has organized 244 volunteers who have put in a combined 1,374 hours removing weeds at Lair Hill, Sewallcrest and Arbor Lodge parks so the city did not need to resort to pesticides.

Using hand weeding instead of pesticides, and volunteers instead of parks employees, is effective, sustainable, and, well, not cheap.

City support of volunteers

It turns out the parks department uses two types of pesticides on most parks. According to John Reed, the agency’s integrative pest management coordinator, pesticide use has always been kept to a minimum in neighborhood parks. A few herbicides are used around trees and shrubs, and at the bottoms of fences, Reed said.

Reed estimated that each year an average five-acre neighborhood park in Portland gets about 28 ounces of Roundup and six ounces of Surflan. It costs about $371 to keep weeds out of some parks. Pesticide-free parks, on the other hand, come with a surprising price tag — about $3,600 in annual maintenance costs, and $9,455 in startup costs for each new park.

Volunteer labor doesn’t come cheap, according to Reed.

“It takes a lot of work to make sure volunteers show up and are supported,” he said.

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