PORTLAND — Things were buzzing on June 21 about 75 yards from the sixth hole on the North Course at Riverside Municipal Golf Course.

“A lot of golfers don’t know I have a hive here,” course supervisor Gene Pierotti said as he pulled a rack of bees from a three-tiered hive set up this spring.

About seven hours later, bees remained in focus as supporters of stringent pesticide use regulations, wearing stickers with bees, urged city councilors for decisive action sooner than later.

“Now is the time to take the leadership role while you can,” Portland Protectors co-founder Maggie Knowles said during a hearing held by the City Council Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

Knowles and others asked the committee, led by Councilor Spencer Thibodeau and staffed by Councilors Belinda Ray and Jill Duson, to forward an ordinance as tough, if not tougher, than the one South Portland enacted in September 2016.

Thibodeau expects a three-month committee process, one which also considers an ordinance recommended by the Pesticide and Fertilizer Task Force appointed by Mayor Ethan Strimling in May 2016. It met from June 2016 through the end of January.

On Tuesday, Thibodeau said the next step is a July 26 panel discussion on both ordinances.

Both ordinances restrict pesticide use by requiring waivers granted after all other measures have failed, and rely on public education. The task force has included organic pesticides within the waiver requirements, which is not the case in South Portland.

The South Portland ordinance is a phased process that will eventually include the nine-hole municipal golf course. In Portland, the Riverside Golf Course could be exempted, but Pierotti said he has already taken steps to reduce synthetic pesticide use by 60 percent. That is achieved largely by dividing the 27 holes at Riverside into thirds and treating each area every three years, while also introducing organic methods.

“It has been very expensive to shift,” Pierotti said, “but cost is not really a factor, and the course has never been better.”

In the committee hearing, Jay Feldman, the executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Beyond Pesticides, urged a wholesale shift in philosophy and practices.

“We are talking about biological systems in the soil that needs to be managed with products that are consistent with systems in the soil,” he said.

Friends of Casco Bay Executive Director Cathy Ramsdell, a task force member, said including organics in the ban is effective to reduce the overall leaching of pesticides into water.

“The ban also means there is no second guessing (about use),” she said.

Portland Protectors co-founder Avery Yale Kamila served with Ramsdell on the task force and opposed the recommended ordinance as too small in scope.

She told the committee it codifies “junk science” regarding organics, waivers would be too easy to obtain, and the ordinance should promote “building soil fertility.”

At Riverside, Pierotti plans to install five more hives while adding 150 trees and plants over 9 acres through a $5,000 grant from Feed a Bee, based in North Carolina.

“I want it to be a model, to show we are a steward of the environment,” he said.

David Harry can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 110 or dharry@theforecaster.net. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHarry8.

As debate on pesticide use buzzes in Portland City Hall, Riverside Golf Course Supervisor Gene Pierotti is adding beehives to increase pollinators to the golf course. “A lot of golfers don’t know I have a hive here,” he said June 21.

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