Wednesday, September 5, 2012

transforming old farms into housing with wells is a bad idea.


more on pesticides
I have been tearing apart the data we have collected from all the well testing,
there are things i "see" as the data goes in that i have to prove by sorting and compiling the data.
That is part of why the Nitrate post was important, because the supposed link between Nitrate levels and pesticides is in the very fabric of current State of Connecticut thinking.
However, this does not mean the reason why that thinking exists is wrong.
The idea that old agricultural areas are to blame, i believe still holds water.
There are many old farm areas that have now become suburbs and this is what i address today.
Data was collected (as best that we could) on past uses of a property.
The entire dataset now has close to 1000 test results,
the dataset of property that used to be on farm land is smaller, but over my own designated limit of 50 wells.
Of all the wells tested, 19.1% of the wells have some pesticide present,
7.74% have pesticides over action limit
From homes that were built in areas that were farms:
26.23% of these wells have some pesticide present
14.75% have pesticides over the action limit.
When looking at the GIS map of this information, it should be noted that only a portion of the old farm area is effected, most of the area is not.
This would indicate that a significant portion (not the only) is from old farm dump sites.

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