URGENT! Action To Stop Imminent Spraying In Boulder County
- pollinators1
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Boulder County staff have proposed a significant expansion of drone spraying of indaziflam to cover more than 3,000 acres of public land. This chemical remains active in soil for three to nine years and kills the majority of seeds in the seed bank, both native and non-native. Once this toxic chemical is applied, the damage will last for years and cannot be undone. Please review this webpage for detailed background and context.
Thanks to your prior efforts and those of many local partners, parts of this plan are currently on hold. However, this pause is temporary. We need continued public pressure to persuade our Commissioners to seriously consider and trial non-chemical alternatives to protect our public lands from contamination.
In late December of last year, more than 1,000 residents wrote to our Commissioners asking them to reconsider this plan. Thanks to the leadership of County Commissioners Marta Loachamin and Ashley Stoltzmann, the program to spray the Western foothills south of Lyons along Highway 36 was temporarily stopped. That pause will only continue if there is ongoing community outcry.
What we need you to do now:
1. Contact all three County Commissioners today and ask them to extend the moratorium on all indaziflam spraying through 2026. The County staff’s stated goal for this program is to control cheatgrass, an annual weed that has been in Colorado since 1892. This is not a new invasion that warrants a full-scale attack (see the commissioner's contact info below).
2. Review the more comprehensive story behind this situation that can be found at the website: https://www.pesticidesbouldercounty.org/indaziflam. It provides both a detailed history of the situation and the chemical, and how we got into this predicament, and a simple four-step plan for moving forward in a new, smarter, and healthier way!
3. Tell your local friends/colleagues, family members. It's time we charted a new course that doesn’t rely on dangerous, toxic shortcuts that endanger the long-term health and well-being of this place we call home. The action that matters most right now is local, and this is where your voice and your vote count.
Contact information for the County Commissioners:
Claire Levy—clevy@bouldercounty.gov
We believe the Commissioners are under intense pressure to lift the ban and allow spraying to begin soon.
