{"id":25739,"date":"2024-09-12T16:19:19","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T22:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/one-way-weeds-spread-is-county-rights-of-way-whos-managing-that\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:26:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:26:06","slug":"one-way-weeds-spread-is-county-rights-of-way-whos-managing-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/one-way-weeds-spread-is-county-rights-of-way-whos-managing-that\/","title":{"rendered":"One way weeds spread is county rights of way. Who\u2019s managing that?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A field of Hoary Cress, a noxious weed that spreads fast and creates a monoculture, is part of the mustard family, and not many herbicides work on it. (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong> This article is the third of three articles about Montezuma County\u2019s noxious weed program. Part 1 on Tuesday provided insight into why the weed program, considered a model for Southwest Colorado, was cut back. Part 2 on Wednesday considered the impact of noxious weeds on Montezuma County. All three parts were published in Wednesday\u2019s printed edition of The Journal. <\/em><\/p>\n

Part 3<\/div>\n

When Montezuma County cut back capacity of programs and personnel from its noxious weed department this year, it transferred roadside weed management to the Road and Bridge Department.<\/p>\n

The move went against the noxious weed advisory board\u2019s recommendation, who resigned after the 2024 noxious weed plan was approved by the commissioners.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe road department doesn\u2019t have the experience, training or knowledge base required to add this to their already busy workload,\u201d the former board wrote in a letter to the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners on Feb. 22.<\/p>\n

Instead, it recommended a work calendar so they could \u201ccoordinate the efforts of both departments as they overlap.\u201d<\/p>\n

The county ultimately gave the responsibility to Road and Bridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe county commissioners weren\u2019t responsive to our suggestions,\u201d said Steve Miles, a former advisory board member named Conservationist of the Year in 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur role was to advise, and they weren\u2019t interested in what we were having to say. That\u2019s why we all resigned.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the change of powers, roadside spraying stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey never once said I had to spray the roads,\u201d said Rob Englehart, superintendent of the county Road and Bridge Department.<\/p>\n

Englehart said if they\u2019re mowing along the roads and pick up some weeds along the way, that\u2019s great.<\/p>\n

Mowing can have a positive impact on managing noxious weeds. But \u201cwhen used alone, it rarely has a positive long-range effect because of the excellent survival ability of noxious weeds,\u201d according to a 2014 resolution.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why doubling up with roadside spraying is helpful.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Road and Bridge department advertised a bid request for \u201cthe treatment of noxious weeds on approximately 900 lane miles of roadway edges within Montezuma County,\u201d according to the ad.<\/p>\n

They received two bids: One at $90,000 from Bonnie Anderson, the former weed director, and the other at $450,000 from Horizon Environmental Services Inc. Both were denied.<\/p>\n

A 2023 resolution<\/a> stressed that \u201cthe spread of noxious weeds can largely be attributed to the movement of seed and plant parts on motor vehicles, and noxious weeds are becoming an increasing maintenance problem on highway rights of way.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be sure, previous resolutions say, \u201cIt shall be the duty of the BOCC (Board of County Commissioners) to confirm that all public roads, public highways, public rights of way, and any easements \u2026 under its jurisdiction, are in compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

At any rate, \u201cMontezuma County is required to control all listed noxious weeds that occur on rights of way by state law,\u201d according to a 2023 resolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a very good, viable program. Now, within a matter of six months, we\u2019ve lost everything,\u201d said Miles. \u201cI mean, look at our county roads right now. They\u2019ve lost five years\u2019 worth of progress, if you look at the edges of our county roads.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past, the weed department used 1% of mill levy funds from the Road Department for managing vegetation along county rights of way.<\/p>\n

Englehart said there\u2019s a pocket of money used for roadside weed management, but they don\u2019t track how much money they spend on it.<\/p>\n

Tall weeds along the roadside obstruct visibility, which poses a danger for everyone on the road: walkers, riders, drivers and wildlife.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou drive along, and the weeds are bigger than the deer and some (deer) are getting hit because of it,\u201d said Brad White, a former advisory board member and farmer in Pleasant View.<\/p>\n

In Resolution 5-2023, it said that the county weed department \u201cis tasked with managing vegetation on county maintained rights of way to prevent the spread of noxious weeds to protect the road infrastructure and maintain adequate visibility for driver safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Down the road, the department was hoping to cutback roadside spraying within five years once the seed bank was controlled, according to the aforementioned resolution.<\/p>\n

Since roadside management halted, however, weeds were able to go to seed this year and impact previous progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was being controlled. Now that whole seed bank is being spread down through all our drainage ditches and back onto our agricultural lands, our private property, our federal property, our state property. It\u2019s a huge seed bank and they\u2019re not doing anything about it, they don\u2019t care to do anything about it,\u201d Miles said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, weed management is a constant battle. And it\u2019s everyone\u2019s problem \u2026 you can lose all your gains in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to be managed by the noxious weed department. As of March this year, all management falls under the Montezuma County\u2019s Road and Bridge department <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,60,109,237,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-county-commissioner","tag-montezuma-county-government","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79073,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25739\/revisions\/79073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25739"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}