Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85911
that didn't have residential property on it. We just con- tinued that when Parks and Recreation was formed as an organization in 2004." To now say enough's enough, "the financial reason was a catalyst," says Cole, but "an overriding factor says, 'If we have an ordinance, we probably shouldn't be doing this anyway.' "Prior to the splitting of the departments, Public Works used Parks as a Public Works entity for streets and drain- ages. We're still stuck with the drainages, but we haven't figured out how to get rid of them yet." Cole laughed along with us at that point, but we suspect he wasn't joking. Back to the roadside maintenance issue. "Actually I made an administrative decision to do this last year. So, we did not mow last year," says Cole. "It was brought forward later by the complaint not of an affected property owner, but of somebody who saw the tall weeds that weren't cut along the roadside and complained to Code Enforcement. It was at that time we felt that we'd better go and inform the city council of what I did ad- ministratively last year. So, that's why it went through city council (this year). We gave them the information, and they collaborated off my decision at that point." Since last year's operational decision not to make the three or four mowings of the right-of-ways under its "jurisdiction" was an administrative one, no official notice was issued to the landowners, says Cole. For 2012, that's changing. Code Enforcement mailed notice to affected landowners upon the city council's recent stand, "and they'll send out another letter in the spring to let them know they are responsible for their roadside ditches," he says. The land in question is located in areas of the city not yet filled in by residential development. Landowners not keeping the grass and weeds below eight inches can be subject to a fine. However, enforcement of city ordinances in Rapid City is, says Cole, largely based on a complaint basis. "I'm guessing that the landowners will hire this work to be done, if they do it. I doubt if most of the landowners have the availability of a bush hog to cut these ditches down." True, says DuPont Crop Protection's Craig Alford. "For roadside weed management, typically we're not deal- ing a lot directly with the landowner," he says. "Most of the time, it's with some sort of agency and/or applicator that's taking care of or managing that particularly piece of roadside. They're a great group of people – very respon- sible – and I really do enjoy working with them." The grass and weeds growing along roadsides may be a constant, but who's responsible for controlling that vegeta- tion is anything but – especially in this era of dwindling agency budgets. Science to the rescue Science can be a solution for agencies trying to stretch dwindling dollars. "They're looking to do more manage- ment of weeds and brush on roadsides to where they don't have to be out there mowing as much, for a couple of reasons really," says Alford, VMF (vegetation man- agement and forestry) and specialty herbicide product development manager. "One obviously is cost. It's not an inexpensive process to have number of employees rid- ing the edges of highways with tractors and bush hogs. There's the physical cost of that, but also with that is the added safety risk that these people out there have. Slow-moving equipment on the sides of the roads; it can be a big hazard out there." So finding a scientific product to become part of vegetation manage- ment strategy can help agencies do more manage- ment with less moolah. As a "low-use" product, DuPont's Perspective herbicide is not only less prevalent in Better Roads March 2012 9