The last four spring seasons, vegetation along most of Lane County's roads has been healthy, lush and green - a result of a law passed in August 2003 requiring that herbicides be used as a last resort.
State and federal roads in the county are still routinely sprayed with poison herbicides, and they look like it: They're dangerous, expensive, ugly and chemical-dependent.
In April 2007, at the annual Last Resort report, Lane County commissioners closely questioned public works personnel about whether any problems had occurred in years without herbicides. "No problems," was the answer. Asked if any herbicide use was proposed for the following year, the response was that small amounts might be targeted to control noxious and invasive weeds.
The Public Works Department is now proposing four broad areas of herbicide use, proposals that disregard the Last Resort law and the county's Integrated Vegetation Management Program Policy. The department has already purchased the herbicides and chemicals it intends to use.
On Jan 2, for the second month in a row, county commissioners, in their role as the county's Board of Health, rejected the proposed uses of herbicides. Two citizens spoke in favor of the proposals, but dozens of citizens at three board meetings testified that they objected to the new proposals on grounds that they:
The commissioners then directed the public works department to sell the current spray truck, and not buy another. They ordered the department to seek public input for 60 days on two questions:
Should the county use herbicides along roadsides? Should county funds be spent to control noxious and invasive weeds?
Now, eight weeks later, it's difficult to find where citizens can address these two pivotal questions.
The Last Resort law was enacted to reduce liabilities from the previous herbicide programs, which appeared dangerous, out of control, and even retaliatory. Those programs were justified as cost-saving, but the only outside audit of the public works department in 1996 determined that spraying cost four times as much as mowing.
I've been a county resident since 1965, serving on the Vegetation Management Advisory Committee since 1996. The Health Advisory Committee and VMAC have both asked public works to address the illegal spraying of county roadsides by abutting landowners. Both committees are concerned with the threat to public health caused by the ongoing unlicensed application of unknown concoctions of poisons (with equally unknown re-entry times) on public roadsides.
The current program has developed good public information on noxious and invasive weeds. I support the limited use of herbicides on invasives, with the following common-sense conditions:
The current proposals do not meet these conditions, andrepresent an unacceptable waste of money that endangers human and environmental health.
Herbicides are poisons. They contaminate our land, our water and even our bodies. Health damage is the real cost of herbicide use.
Please let the commissioners know we appreciate their efforts to protect public health. Any proposal that does not prioritize human and environmental health is unacceptable.
John Sundquist, a Coburg farmer, serves on Lane County's Vegetation Management Advisory Committee.