In its draft form, the six-page bylaw gives golf courses and lawn bowling greens until 2017 to comply, giving the businesses time to develop non-pesticide practices.

The bylaw focuses exclusively on banning pesticides from lawns. It permits the continued spraying of shrubs, plants, flowers and vegetable gardens. The new rules apply to residential properties, businesses and provincial lands, but doesn’t apply to federal properties such as CFB Kingston or area prisons.

Jeff Lowes, a spokesman for the Kingston Lawn Care Association said in August that debate about the proposed bylaw is far from over.

The small, family-run lawn care companies he represents are upset about the city-wide ban on pesticides because they feel as if the municipality is “trying to put them out of business.”

”[City politicians] have not dug through this issue and they’ve chosen to ignore a lot of the information that’s been given to them,” he said.

Lowes said the way the bylaw is written is contradictory because it bans the cosmetic use of pesticides on lawns, while still allowing them to be used on plants, shrubs, flowers and vegetable gardens.

Source: The Kingston (Ontario, Canada) Whig-Standard