| |
 |
|
|
The Urban Pesticide Pollution Prevention (UP3) Project works to prevent water pollution from urban pesticide use. The Project tracks, analyzes, and shares information about urban pesticide use, regulatory processes related to pesticides of concern, and science and monitoring data. The Project manages the Urban Pesticides Committee, which for more than a decade has provided a forum for stakeholders to coordinate and develop ways to reduce pesticide impacts on aquatic life. The Project also provides tools to help municipalities reduce their pesticide use.
- The primary purpose of pesticides is to kill pests, such as insects or weeds. Rain and irrigation can wash pesticides away from where they were applied. Outdoor insecticide applications—most commonly to control ants around buildings—have been directly linked to toxicity in California creeks.
- Biocides (a special class of pesticides) flow into creeks when swimming pools and spas are drained to the gutter. On some occasions, emptying swimming pools has been linked to fish kills in nearby creeks.
- Cleaning up indoors after using pesticides—and using pesticides indoors in ways that cause them to be washed down drains—has also been linked to water pollution, because sewage treatment plants are not designed to remove pesticides.
- At least half of California's pesticides use is in urban areas. Pesticide-caused water pollution problems are more common, and more severe, in California's urban areas than in agricultural areas
- Our ability to improve water quality in the future depends, in part, on preventing water pollution from urban pesticide use.
|
| |
|
| |
Click here to see a table showing pesticides of particular concern to the UP3 Project.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Funding for this project has been provided in full or in part through an agreement with the State Water Resources Control Board.
Thank you to our interim funders during the bond freeze:
• Bay Area Clean Water Agencies
• Bay Area Pollution Prevention Group
• City of Palo Alto
• City of San Diego
• San Francisco Department of the Environment
|
|
|
|
