Mailbag: Less pesticides, more forward thinking

I am very disturbed, thinking about my walk through the grounds of the Montage Laguna Beach today, where I witnessed the gardeners, yet again, dousing everything with pesticide.

I looked up at the storm clouds, knew rain was coming and all that poison will be washed into the sea, into our “marine preserve.” Has anyone studied the dwindling biodiversity of the coastal tidal zones as a result of all this unnecessary runoff? Where are all the little crabs that used to scurry around the rocks?

What price are we willing to pay for a perfectly manicured, bugless Disneyland landscape? It’s time to start putting a priority on protecting our ecosystem and the wildlife that shares our community. Laguna is a beautiful, forward-thinking town, and I would love to see us as an example to other cities in controlling the poisons that we are mindlessly dumping into the ocean.

Hannah A. Lewis

Laguna Beach