On December 5, after approximately one hour of discussion, city officials in Carlsbad, California, unanimously voted in favor of organic pesticide usage on all city land. The area that falls under this jurisdiction includes: 1,162 acres of land, approximately 19,000 trees, 47 miles of trails, 58 buildings and The Crossings golf course.

Chemical pesticides are not going to be completely phased out however. The city will opt to use organic pesticides whenever possible, yet if a problem arises that is not solvable by organic pesticide usage, the city retains the right to use chemical pesticides instead.

The Carlsbad Integrated Pest Management Plan, the piece of legislation that was amended, now focuses on "emphasizing the initial use of organic pesticides," followed by "limiting the use of chemical pesticides where the general public congregates."


The Carlsbad city website states that this change could "result in an increased cost of approximately $1 million a year." One easily observable reason for this will be the switch from Roundup, which costs around $26 a gallon, to organic options, like Avenger, Scythe and Suppress EC, which run around $80 a gallon.

The nearby cities of Irvine and San Juan Capistrano have also recently switched to favoring organic pesticide usage over chemical pesticides and have seen their total landscaping costs rise around 5.6%.

Although, in the end, the idea is that you can't put a price on human health, and that Carlsbad is taking steps to remedy public concerns after an alleged 2010 cancer outbreak, which was supposedly caused by harmful pesticides and received a lot of media attention.