Taking care of our shared home

IIt starts at home

I am a mom and a neighbor. I started asking questions about the water at home, the air around our children, and how the land around us is cared for. A school tour brought those questions into focus.

What pesticides are applied nearby? What information is available about drift or runoff? Which chemicals are included in water testing? I wanted to understand the records behind the answers.

These are questions families, teachers, grounds teams and administrators can explore together. We all share this place, including the members and families of the clubs around us.

Application records, testing results and monitoring plans give every neighbor a common starting point for an informed conversation.

I began gathering public information and built the resource I wished existed for every family. What began at home grew into a map of 658 schools and preschools, open to all of us.

IIWhat the public record shows

One local school and course are about 0.14 miles apart, roughly 750 feet, measured property line to property line on official county tax parcels. Their named locations and records are available in the map and Club Database.

An annual stream-monitoring agreement makes one local course’s results public. The 2024 report tested for two fungicides. One was not detected. Public reporting gives residents, club families and local officials information they can read together.

The other, fluxapyroxad, turned up at all three downstream test points, which the monitoring reviewer attributes to runoff from managed turf, at levels far below the action threshold.

Chlorothalonil, applied heavily for years, was dropped from the testing list because the club says it no longer uses it.

IIIWhat different records can tell us

A monitoring report answers a specific set of questions. Understanding its scope helps the whole community identify what additional information would be useful.

The documented monitoring plan tests two pesticides each year: chlorothalonil and, in the reviewer's words, "another pesticide of the superintendent's choosing." It must be mobile, used in significant quantity, and near the sampling points. The documented program does not include air or drift monitoring on neighboring properties. Complete application records and those additional measurements would answer different questions.

New York's neighbor notification rule, which requires 48-hour written warning before commercial pesticide spraying, applies only in counties that have adopted a local notification law, and it does not reach golf courses the way it reaches residential lawn applications.

A biological soil-nutrient partnership describes one approach to caring for turf. It does not replace pesticides or serve as an application inventory. Both soil-care practices and chemical records belong in a fuller picture of stewardship.

The chemicals named in these public water reports are conventional synthetic products.

When we share complete information, we can take care of our shared home together.

IVThe map grows

A note on the numbers: distances here are measured from the edge of the school property to the edge of the course property, not center to center. Where an official parcel outline was not available, the distance is an approximation from the school's address point.

Within three miles of the course that first prompted these questions sit eighteen schools and preschools. The eight with enrollment figures on record alone hold about 3,700 children.

Then I widened the map. In Armonk, all four public schools in the local district plus three preschools sit within three miles of a course: about 2,550 children. Two of them sit even closer to another course. One elementary school is less than a tenth of a mile away, and the high school about 0.6 miles, both estimates. Named school-to-course distances are in the map.

In Pound Ridge, two more schools sit near a mapped course.

In back country Greenwich, ten schools and nearly 4,900 children sit within three miles of thirteen clubs. These are shared surroundings for school families and club families alike.

Three of the mapped Greenwich campuses sit about a quarter mile, four-tenths of a mile and 1.25 miles from their nearby courses, respectively. No official parcel outline exists yet for these campuses, so their distances are estimates from each school’s address. The map identifies each location.

Thirty-eight schools. About 11,400 children, counting only the schools with enrollment figures.

Then I kept going. In North Stamford, three mapped courses sit within three miles of thirty-one schools and preschools: about 11,700 children.

Two North Stamford elementary schools sit about a tenth of a mile from their nearest courses. Both distances are estimates from the schools’ addresses; the named records remain in the map.

In New Canaan, essentially the entire public school district, all three elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school, plus a private school and five preschools, sits within three miles of a local course: about 5,500 children.

Eighty-one schools. About 28,600 children, counting only the seventy with enrollment figures.

Since then the map has grown to 658 schools and preschools across Westchester, Danbury, Norwalk, Darien and Somers. Measured property line to property line, every one of them sits within three miles of a mapped golf course. Enrollment for the expanded map has not been gathered yet, so the child count above is a floor, not a total.

VInformation for every school family

The map includes public and private school families. By my count, at least 239 of the 446 elementary, middle and high schools on it are public district schools. Every family deserves access to the same information, whatever school their children attend.

Public schools in Armonk, Bedford and Greenwich are among the schools within three miles of mapped courses. Their individual distances, nearby-course lists and source records remain available in the map.

More than a dozen Stamford public schools sit within three miles of the three courses noted above, and one elementary school is about a tenth of a mile from a course.

Public-school assignment is tied to home address. Shared information helps residents, teachers and administrators consider the surroundings of the schools serving their community.

VIA shared picture, not a recommendation

I ran the map in reverse too, looking for schools more than three miles from any golf course. Measured property line to property line, I could not find one on the map. The farthest, a preschool in Ridgefield, sits about 2.9 miles away.

Four other mapped campuses sit about 0.3, 0.1, 0.2 and 1.2 miles from their nearest courses. The named school records show those distances and their measurement sources.

Distance is useful context, not a measured spray zone or a school recommendation.

Our homes, schools and courses are part of the same landscape.

This information belongs to everyone who lives here, not only people with the time to search individual records.

Taking care of that landscape is something neighbors, school communities and club families can do together.

No distance on this map establishes safety or harm. Appropriate monitoring and complete records help answer questions that location alone cannot.

VIIWhat a school can tell you

A statement that a school completes all required testing does not, by itself, answer questions about nearby pesticide use.

Parents need to know which substances were tested, where samples were taken, when testing occurred, and what the results showed.

Compliance and a complete picture of potential exposure are not the same thing.

New York already shows the mechanism exists. Every public school district in the state must test its drinking water for lead and post the results, with its remediation plan, on the school's own website within six weeks of receiving the lab reports.

That duty covers lead. Pesticide application records and air monitoring provide additional kinds of information about our shared surroundings.

This existing publication mechanism offers a practical starting point for sharing more environmental information.

In Connecticut I could not find an equivalent standing duty for this review. Publishing available information would give families a useful starting point there too.

VIIILooking after the next generation

Children’s developing brains can be especially vulnerable to pesticide exposure. Understanding the research helps families and grounds teams ask informed questions without assuming exposure at any particular school.

Prenatal exposure to the organophosphate chlorpyrifos, long a standard golf-course insecticide, has been linked in peer-reviewed studies to measurable changes in children's brain structure and lasting deficits in IQ and motor function.

Pyrethroid exposure has been associated with higher rates of ADHD symptoms in children.

And in 2025, a study in JAMA Network Open found that adults living within one mile of a golf course had 2.26 times the odds of Parkinson's disease compared with those more than six miles away, with the pattern consistent with a pesticide-in-water pathway.

That study used distance as a stand-in for exposure and needs replication. It offers research context for informed questions, not a finding about a local home or school.

IXWhat this does not say

To be clear: none of this proves any child in Bedford, Armonk, Pound Ridge, Greenwich, Stamford, or New Canaan has been harmed by any specific chemical.

Limited monitoring leaves questions unanswered. We can distinguish those unknowns from evidence of harm and work together toward a fuller understanding.

XWhat we can build together

Residents, schools, clubs and local leaders all benefit from complete information. These are practical ways to share it.

Complete application inventories help qualified professionals select appropriate tests. An inventory and a laboratory report answer different questions, and both are useful to the community.

To understand why, look at the scale. More than seventy active ingredients are registered for use on golf turf: fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, growth regulators.

Chlorothalonil is an EPA-classified likely carcinogen, banned in the European Union since 2019. Propiconazole disrupts hormones. The herbicide 2,4-D is linked to Parkinson's risk.

The insecticide chlorpyrifos is tied to lasting brain changes in children exposed before birth. Carbaryl is another likely carcinogen.

Eight of these have turned up across years of public course water reports reviewed by the town.

Products described as organic also need careful evaluation: copper sulfate persists and builds up in soil, and the EPA placed pyrethrins in its "suggestive evidence of carcinogenicity" category after benign liver tumors turned up in female rats, evidence it called not sufficient to judge human risk. EPA's 2006 reregistration decision for pyrethrins.

Sharing complete records helps families and laboratories make informed testing decisions.

• Every club should publish complete pesticide application records. Monitoring should address the full inventory through appropriate methods, rather than only a selected two-pesticide panel, for the benefit of neighbors and club families alike.
• Add air and drift monitoring at the property lines, especially on the school side. Test the wells at schools within a mile.
• Schools and daycares should publish what they know about the water and air around their buildings, so parents can make informed decisions. For a public district, that belongs on the same page that already carries its lead results, with the nearest course named.
• Town wetlands commissions should require complete records and appropriate monitoring so the community can work from shared information.
• Since several regional courses drain toward New York City’s reservoirs, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection should help clarify what the available water records show.

XIFor Albany and Hartford

Our legislators in Albany and Hartford can extend neighbor notification to golf courses, helping residents, schools and grounds teams coordinate before applications.

Require air and drift monitoring wherever a course sits within three miles of a school or daycare, independent selection of testing panels informed by complete inventories, and publication of every club’s full application records.

Require every school and daycare to post its water and air quality reports on its website, where any parent can find them.

Twelve of the seventeen clubs across these towns operate as tax-exempt nonprofits. Connecting that status with transparent public reporting would support shared stewardship.

XIIOur shared home

We all live here, and this affects everyone who calls this place home. When neighbors, schools, clubs and local leaders can see the same information, we can make thoughtful decisions together. Informed neighbors make a stronger community. Taking care of this place starts at home.