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announced plans to provide $51 million over the next three years to impose stricter limits on the amount of kepone (also known as chlordecone) used on bananas -- one of the islands' major exports -- and other crops. The funds would also be used to equip laboratories to test for presence of kepone. Concerns over the pesticide arose in 2007, when a suggested the chemical might be linked to increased cancer rates in both islands. Guadeloupe has instituted a five-year ban on fishing in rivers found to contain high levels of kepone and other pesticides. In the meantime, France's health minister has warned residents to watch what they eat and drink. Health officials also plan to encourage islanders to grow their own gardens and avoid using harmful chemicals. Kepone was the pesticide spilled into the James River in Virginia in the mid-1970s just above the Chesapeake Bay. The fishing industry lost millions of dollars and the area wasn't reopened to fishing until 1988. Kepone, a PAN Bad Actor Pesticide, is no longer registered for use in the U.S. and it is banned or restricted in at least 11 other countries. reports that "the ban is expected to include chemicals used by many gardeners to kill the chafer beetle grub." These grubs not only attack grass roots, they also attract skunks that paw open lawns in search of the succulent grubs. "People are going to have to learn new techniques," says Mark MacKenzie of Appleseed Organic Lawn Care in Ottawa. Fortunately, he adds "there are excellent organic methods out there," including the nematodes he has used as a biopesticide against chafer beetle grubs for the past 10 years. "They're microscopic worms, and once they infest the [grub's] body, they will inject bacteria [that will] kill the grub." MacKenzie says the bacteria are harmless to humans, pets and skunks. Kept dormant in cold storage, the worms are revived by exposure to water when sprayed onto lawns. One application costs about $80. MacKenzie also recommends never cutting grass shorter than three inches -- this will promote deep root growth that reduces grub damage.

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Times Herald Record. While elimination of the use of synthetic chemicals by law must be limited to Village property, Alice Andrews, an environmental commission member and the organizer of a task force on organics that advocated the measure, "hopes that residents will follow suit and stop treating their lawns with inorganic chemicals". Andrews and other residents would have preferred legislation banning or severely restricting pesticide use for all properties in the jurisdiction, but as in most other states, pesticide pre-emption law prohibits the Village from regulating pesticides beyond its own property. "'What we've decided is to try every other angle, especially education,'" Andrews said. The task force made posters asking residents to sign a petition on myspace.com advocating that Ulster County ban pesticides. She wants the New Paltz Website to provide pesticide education, aiming for "'social pressure' to 'do what formal legislation can't.'" The New Paltz action is similar to reforms spreading in towns and cities across North America, from San Francisco's pioneering 1996 IPM program to Maine's defeat of pre-emption last year, and the even more rapid adoption of cosmetic pesticide bans from British Columbia to Nova Scotia in Canada.

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