Dear Councillors,

I write to you in regards to the review of the report commissioned by council executives "to eliminate" glyphosate use by Waverley Council. This review will be presented at tomorrow night’s council meeting and unfortunately proposes to maintain the use of glyphosate. The report falls short of banning carcinogenic Glyphosate from being used which I believe was not the original intention of most councillors who passed a motion unanimously in September 2018 to research ways to eliminate glyphosate use. I urge you to vote against the review into the report and vote to ban glyphosate categorically as Georges River Council and Fairfield Council have done along with every local government in France and the entire country of Austria. It must me noted that the original name for the report was to 'investigate the elimination of glyphosate', miraculously the report is now described in the meeting's agenda as a "Herbicide Reduction Study"?

The qualifications to "eliminate glyphosate use" of the company commissioned to write the report have to be questioned.  Did the company have any experience in eliminating glyphosate from council outdoor spaces? There was an opportunity to engage a qualified company that had helped French local governments transition to their current ban of glyphosate, however this opportunity was not taken up by council executives.

Dollar value put on banning glyphosate opens up a huge liability issue for council.

Basically the report comes to the conclusion that it would be too expensive to ban the use of glyphosate and puts a dollar figure of approx. $700k per year to do so. I would like to remind councillors of their obligation to ensure the safety of council workers and the community. Currently US $billion’s have been awarded to workers who have handled glyphosate and contracted non-hodgkin’s lymphoma in the USA. The World Health Organisation has stated that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.

I propose that the figure stated in the report is incorrect and does not take into account the long term cost saving of making the design of our outdoor spaces weed resistant. This solution was proposed by Waverley Council’s acting manager of outdoor spaces, Craig Wood, at a meeting held at council chambers in Feb 2019 with Emily Scott – Director Waverley Renewal and Sam Mc Guiness -Executive Manager Sustainable Waverley present.

I called this meeting because the original tender did not represent councillors’ motion to ban glyphosate. At the meeting it was agreed that the tender would be changed to represent the motion. However it appears that there is a general confirmation bias that glyphosate use is necessary, why?

The views of the most qualified staff member at Waverley Council, Craig Wood, have been ignored in the report. That being the simple redesign of outdoor spaces by:

1/. planting more trees,

2/.increasing soil fertility so broad leaf weeds can’t penetrate turf,

3/. reducing ornate gardens and increasing mulching of garden beds will create weed resistant landscapes.

4/.Introducing new technologies of organic steam / foam spraying equipment that can replace all spot spraying of glyphosate.

Thank you for carefully considering your vote tomorrow night and making Waverley Council a progressive, health conscious, sustainable leader in reducing our community’s toxic exposure by banning glyphosate use.

Regards,

David Walsman

Bronte Resident.