Our front lawn is full of dandelions.
I imagine the neighbors get together, huddled in a circle in someone's basement, curtains pulled to keep the meeting secret, just to discuss what to do about us.
It's not that we love the dandelions.
I'd prefer not to have them, really, but a lot of the herbicides that target them .... well, they have "icide" in the name for a reason.
Those poisons don't go away. They stop being on your lawn because rain washes them into the ground and into the storm sewers.
And they're still not gone. People think, "Oh, the water treatment plant will get rid of them." They don't. They don't get a chance.
When the poison eventually gets to a storm sewer, it follows our nations rivers and streams. Around here we're ultimately sending our poisons, fertilizers and chemicals down the Mississippi.
Now, there's a massive dead zone the size of New Jersey near New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico.
Fish and plants can't live there. There's not enough oxygen. And it's because of what we, the residents of the U.S., are putting on our fields and lawns and into our storm sewers.
It never goes away. It just goes somewhere else. Your lawn may be weed free, but the price was part of our planets water and sealife.
Julie Todd is the night editor at The Herald News in Joliet. She and her
husband are looking to cut the chemicals and get back to basics -- minus the
granola and hemp clothing. They live in a home they bought last year in
Plainfield, where they're making changes to create their own little patch of
utopia.
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