Are pesticides deforming frogs?

Streams and lawn chemicals

• We have two streams on the back of our property. Our entire neighborhood is built on a huge sloping piece of land. These waterways are at the bottom of the slope. Most of the neighbors use services like Chemlawn and Truegreen to maintain thier picture-perect lawns. We have elected not to use pesticides or chemicals. We do use neem oil for our vegetable garden and flowering shrubs. My questions are: Is there some kind of law about using lawn chemicals and pesticides near a stream? Where do I find out about it, and what do I do if I find out that the entire neighborhood and the lawn services they use are in violation? Also, is the runoff from our use of neem oil doing something to hurt our streams? Occasionally, we do see some little fish in there, and we have seen a couple of frogs and turtles, but I don't think as many as there used to be. We do live in an unincorporated area, so we do not have any city ordinaces to look into. Any help would be most appreciated.

• Answer:

  I work in Water Quality in the city of Tulsa and we do not have any rules against using chemical lawn treatments. You may not have any city ordinances, but you could check with the county about that. (Environmental Health Office or Environmental Office...you can check online) If there is a lot of chemical runoff, it does kill off the wildlife. The fact that there is some wildlife in the stream is encouraging. I am not too familiar with the effects of Neem oil, but most feel it does not do any harm. http://www.ok.gov/okcc/Agency_Divisions/Water_Quality_Division/Blue_Thumb/Blue_Thumb_Volunteer_Monitoring.html