Belchertown Board of Health moves to draft pesticide ban for town-owned properties

BELCHERTOWN -- June 22, 2026, Belchertown Board of Health votes to draft a regulation banning glyphosate-based herbicides on town-owned properties. The board voted unanimously at its June 22 meeting to begin the process after a roughly half-hour presentation by a board member who identified chemical herbicide use at a railroad-track embankment and one baseball field sprayed three times a year for cosmetic reasons. The board is using a South Hadley regulation adopted in 2020 as a model and expects to invite the town manager, DPW director, and school department grounds staff to an August or September meeting before holding a formal public hearing in the fall. The board also voted unanimously to restore the animal inspector's mileage reimbursement to the standard Belchertown rate of 72.5 cents per mile, replacing a flat $500 annual stipend that had been subject to payroll tax withholding. Dr. Stephen Frantz, PhD, a national pesticide health expert listed on the agenda as a guest speaker, did not appear at the meeting.