At least one city councillor is on board with a recent call to stop using pesticides and herbicides for cosmetic purposes on City of Kamloops property.

The Thompson Watershed Coalition says the City’s own statistics show the use of these chemicals has gone up by more than 100 percent since 2018.

They’re mostly used on sports fields but are also used in some city parks and walkways.

Dennis Walsh was surprised to hear those numbers and says he’s behind the environmental group. “I was under the impression that we were minimizing the number of pesticides but this report states we are doubling our use of pesticides so I’m a little concerned myself, I think we need to be phasing out of pesticides.”

The TWC would like to see that come to an end and Dennis Walsh agrees. “I think the science is in there. I think there’s been enough lawsuits with Monsanto etc. I think pesticides are a threat to the health in our city and I’d like to see it addressed as closely as possible to actually minimizing it as much as possible if not completely eradicating pesticides.”

Walsh say there’s been dialogue with the dedicated environmental group for a while. “We’ve had back and forth. There’s been a few releases from this group but they’re definitely very focused on reducing pesticides use throughout our city.”

Walsh says while it’s too late to do anything about it for this summer, the city will take a closer look in the fall. “One of the positive things this has lead to is that we’re going to review having and integrated pest management plan. It’s going to come to the Civic Operations Committee I believe in September, at the end of the summer so, I don’t see any changes this year.”