An online petition calling on the city to honor its commitment to organic park management has garnered hundreds of signatures in less than a week.
The petition, started by the advocacy group Organic Lands Durango, asks the city to honor a 2012 resolution to implement organic management practices across all city land and minimize the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
The advocacy group gathered 546 online signatures in support of the 2012 resolution as of Friday.
The city started its organic program with eight parks and one sports complex. But now, advocates say the progress of the original program has been lost.
“There is no way to claim at this point that we have any true organic parks,” said Sheryl McGourty, who started the petition.
The advocates are particularly concerned with synthetic chemicals because of the “environmental risks associated with chemical exposure and how these substances adversely affect children, soil organisms and water sources,” the petition says.
McGourty has spoken with city officials, including councilors, about the concerns and found they were receptive to revisiting the issue, she said.
Specifically, organic advocates want to see chemicals dicamba and 2, 4-D – both used in conventional turf management – barred from city parks because of their toxicity, she said.
The city uses the chemicals in its conventionally managed parks, said Cathy Metz, director of the Parks and Recreation Department. But the chemicals have been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and are applied by a licensed contractor, she said.
Implementing an organically managed parks program has been challenging for the city because the methods the city used have not maintained the quality of turf some residents expect. Some parks were infested with weeds, and others had developed bare spots when the city re-evaluated the organic parks program in 2017, Metz said. Eight parks were in the organic program at the time.
“We determined the program, as it had originally been set up, wasn’t working,” she said.
A turf specialist with Colorado State University, Tony Koski, visited Durango’s organic parks two years ago and found the parks in the program were not getting enough nitrogen.
The city then developed various approaches for the eight parks in the organic program and started implementing them last year.
Folsom and Schneider parks have received synthetic fertilizer, and Fiesta, a spot weed treatment recommended by an organic management expert, Metz said.
Four other parks – Pioneer, Brookside, Riverfront and Iris – have received organic fertilizer and Fiesta.
Fanto and Needham parks were taken out of the organic parks program to rescue the turf, according to city documents.
The city intended to put both parks back into the organic program after a year of rescue treatments, but the city couldn’t overseed or fertilize as much as it needed to in those parks because of the drought, Metz said.
The rescue treatments will continue this year, and the city will re-evaluate whether to return Fanto and Needham to the organic parks program at the end of the summer, she said.
The drought also interfered with plans for the other parks, she said.
For example, the city couldn’t use the organic fertilizers as often as necessary. The city also planned to plant mini-clover in Riverfront and Iris to help build nitrogen in the soil, but they were unable to because of the drought, Metz said.
This year will be the first true year of modified management, Metz said. The city would like to give the revised management program three years to see how effective it is, she said.
However, the city is open to discussing the organic parks program, she said.
“I think it’s always on the mind of community members,” she said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
