Editorial: Sonoma braces for the ‘other’ weed

Sometimes, no one can sum up a problem quite like a city’s public works department.

Take Sonoma’s, for instance, which recently encapsulated the question whether the city should “completely ban the use of Roundup from all city maintenance efforts” in anticipation of the Sonoma City Council this week considering a total ban on glyphosate weed control products, which are suspected carcinogens.

Such a ban, according to this week’s city staff report, “would be most successful if the community develops a greater tolerance for weeds growing on City property and if visitors take the initiative to pull weeds they find offensive.”

That’s pretty much what it comes down to: Don’t like Monsanto, Sonoma? Then pull your own damn weeds.

Of course public works isn’t pithy enough to put it like that, but the sentiment holds true. Take away the most simple and straightforward method of controlling weeds in city parks and other public commons and, well, Sonoma will have a lot more weeds in parks and the commons. Is it worth possibly exposing landscapers and water systems to slight traces of a carcinogen?

Depends on how much you hate poison oak.

Monsanto is the company that developed the suspected-cancer-causing – yet highly effective weed suppresser – glyphosate-herbicide brand Roundup, and it has been a devil’s weed for years.

The Sonoma City Council last December approved further limiting its already sparse use of glyphosate in landscape maintenance – at this point it’s allowed as a “last resort” to control weeds. Roundup’s primary weed-stunting ingredient is glyphosate, an herbicidal compound developed by Monsanto in the 1970s; long suspected for a link to cancer, Monsanto has hung its hat on enough inconclusive studies to keep Roundup from losing in the courts of both justice and public opinion – despite its growing reputation as a health concern, it accounts for nearly $5 billion in annual sales for Monsanto.

It’s an interesting line for a city council to draw: suspecting a product’s ill effects enough to limit its use, but not ban it altogether.

As it happens, in late March, a San Francisco jury ruled that Roundup was a prominent factor in a California man’s cancer, after he’d used the spray for 26 years to kill poison oak and other weeds on his property. And in a separate ruling, the jury held Roundup manufacturing company Monsanto liable for $80 million in damages. It was the second such ruling, following an August verdict in another cancer case that found Monsanto liable for $289 million – later reduced to $78 million by the presiding judge. Bayer, which owns Monsanto, plans to appeal both verdicts.

The Sonoma City Council’s taking up the issue a little more than week after the verdict isn’t as much reactionary as coincidental – they’d planned to revisit a total ban after city staff returned with some detail about how much they currently use. And it isn’t much – about a gallon overall last year, according to the staff report. And none has been used so far in 2019.

The council’s decision on a total ban on glyphosate for city workers took place after the Index-Tribune went to press on Monday, April 1, but the betting odds were favoring the approval of a complete ban. Either way, glyphosate’s use going forward by the City of Sonoma will be negligible.

Monsanto has long held that numerous studies deem glyphosate, a herbicide the company developed in the 1970s and is a primary ingredient in Roundup, as safe. Monsanto’s patent on glyphosate expired in 2000 and today it is used in about 1,000 various products on the market.

But glyphosate has come increasingly under the cancer-causing microscope since 2015, when the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared glyphosate a probable carcinogen. Glyphosate, frankly, has been on the cancer radar for years before that – with environmentalists decrying its health effects and numerous municipalities already banning its use from city and county services.

Despite its limited use in Sonoma, public works does stress that Roundup comes in pretty handy with poison oak, star thistle and blackberry bushes – which, as one can guess, can be a pain, quite literally, to eradicate the old-fashioned way.

So strap on those Kevlar gloves and firm up your weed tolerance, Sonoma. You’ve got some star thistle to pull.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.