{"id":67400,"date":"2017-06-23T19:22:08","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T01:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/county-to-enforce-noxious-weed-controls\/"},"modified":"2017-06-24T01:22:08","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T01:22:08","slug":"county-to-enforce-noxious-weed-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/county-to-enforce-noxious-weed-controls\/","title":{"rendered":"County to enforce noxious weed controls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The county might have to spray weeds at a property at County Roads 21 and G after numerous notices to the property owner.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Montezuma County is stepping up enforcement to control noxious weeds on private property when they get out of control and impact neighbors.<\/p>\n

A problematic property on Road 21 is the first case the county is going after because an expanding field of hoary cress and Russian knapweed has been ignored for eight years and is hurting a neighboring farmer.<\/p>\n

County noxious weed manager Bonnie Loving said she has sent compliance letters and visited the property to persuade the owner to control the weeds as required by the Colorado Weed Management Act and county policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s devastating a neighbors property, so it\u2019s time we step up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A farmer adjacent to the weed-infested property in the McElmo Canyon area told the county commissioners that wind-blown seeds threaten his hay field operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve put in a lot of labor and costs to control weeds blowing onto my fields from another property,\u201d said Mark Peters.<\/p>\n

The problem is so severe that county officials said it is prepared to use its ultimate authority and control the weeds if the property owner does not by fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next step is to form a weed management plan approved by the commissioners for that property, then get a warrant to access the property to treat the weeds in late fall,\u201d Loving said. \u201cMaybe that will give the owners time to step up and handle the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the warrant to access the private land, a lien may be placed against the property until the contract costs of noxious weed treatment is paid, she said.<\/p>\n

Loving said there are multiple county properties that are at the severe noxious weed-infestation level, and efforts are underway to persuade the owners to take responsibility for the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cEffectively controlling noxious weeds is not a onetime event, but an ongoing project with your land,\u201d she stated in a compliance letter.<\/p>\n

Protecting agricultural interests from noxious weed infestation has become a priority for the county the past couple of years. Officials said they are willing to control serious weed problems on private property if necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis action is the proof of the pudding of what we are going to do about weeds in this county,\u201d said commissioner Keenan Ertel. \u201cIt\u2019s time to start making this program work.\u201d<\/p>\n

For information about weed management and programs, contact the county noxious weed department at 970-565-0580, or visit the Montezuma County website.<\/a><\/p>\n

jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

could mean warrants to enter private land for treatment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,21,13,193,109],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-67400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-land-use","tag-montezuma-county-commissioner"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67400","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=67400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67400"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=67400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}