Williamstown Bans SGAR Rodenticides on Town Property

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:48AM / Tuesday, November 25, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The town officials last week announced a policy restricting the use on town property of a type of rodenticide that has been linked to die-off of non-rodent wildlife.

According to the policy posted on the town's website, the use of "second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides," commonly known as SGARs on town property will be prohibited as of Dec. 1.

An emergency waiver allowing use of SGARS can be granted by the town manager in the event of, "a significant rodent infestation of public health consequence that has already exhausted all workable less-toxic integrated pest and rodent management practices."

Otherwise, the ban will apply to all buildings, grounds, parks and open spaces owned by the town, including Williamstown Elementary School, which is owned by Williamstown and leased to the Mount Greylock Regional School District.

On Thursday, Mount Greylock Superintendent Joseph Bergeron said the district already has a practice of not using SGARs, instead practicing integrated pest management, at all three of its schools: WES, Mount Greylock Regional School and Lanesborough Elementary.

The announcement of the policy by Town Hall follows a conversation that began in April at the Select Board, when resident Leslie Gura raised the issue.

At the time, Gura told the Select Board that there was legislation in Boston to ban the use of SGARs throughout the commonwealth and asked that the board take a first step by implementing a bylaw to end their use on town-owned properties.

The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife advocates that all residents and building managers avoid the use of the SGAR class of rodent killers because the poison spreads from dead rats up the food chain with unintended consequences.

"Second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) prevent blood from clotting, causing fatal internal hemorrhage," the Fisheries and Wildlife website explains. "SGARs can poison wildlife in two ways: 1) primary poisoning when a non-targeted animal eats the bait and dies several days later, or 2) secondary poisoning when a predator or scavenger eats prey that has eaten the poisoned bait.

"Anticoagulants bioaccumulate, or build up over time, in animals that consume large quantities of rodents that have consumed these poisons. Secondary poisoning has been documented in birds of prey like eagles, hawks, and owls, as well as mammals like foxes, fishers, bobcats, and coyotes."

SGARs were shown to have caused the deaths of two bald eagles in the commonwealth in 2021 and to have contributed to the death of at least one other bald eagle in 2023, the state agency says.

Tags: pests,

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.

The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.

That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.

"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.

"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."

For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.

"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."

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