Editor’s Note: This article is the third of three articles about Montezuma County’s 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’s printed edition of The Journal.
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.
The move went against the noxious weed advisory board’s recommendation, who resigned after the 2024 noxious weed plan was approved by the commissioners.
“The road department doesn’t have the experience, training or knowledge base required to add this to their already busy workload,” the former board wrote in a letter to the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners on Feb. 22.
Instead, it recommended a work calendar so they could “coordinate the efforts of both departments as they overlap.”
The county ultimately gave the responsibility to Road and Bridge.
“The county commissioners weren’t responsive to our suggestions,” said Steve Miles, a former advisory board member named Conservationist of the Year in 2008.
“Our role was to advise, and they weren’t interested in what we were having to say. That’s why we all resigned.”
In the change of powers, roadside spraying stopped.
“They never once said I had to spray the roads,” said Rob Englehart, superintendent of the county Road and Bridge Department.
Englehart said if they’re mowing along the roads and pick up some weeds along the way, that’s great.
Mowing can have a positive impact on managing noxious weeds. But “when used alone, it rarely has a positive long-range effect because of the excellent survival ability of noxious weeds,” according to a 2014 resolution.
That’s why doubling up with roadside spraying is helpful.
Earlier this year, the Road and Bridge department advertised a bid request for “the treatment of noxious weeds on approximately 900 lane miles of roadway edges within Montezuma County,” according to the ad.
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.
A 2023 resolution stressed that “the 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.”
To be sure, previous resolutions say, “It 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 … under its jurisdiction, are in compliance.”
At any rate, “Montezuma County is required to control all listed noxious weeds that occur on rights of way by state law,” according to a 2023 resolution.
“We had a very good, viable program. Now, within a matter of six months, we’ve lost everything,” said Miles. “I mean, look at our county roads right now. They’ve lost five years’ worth of progress, if you look at the edges of our county roads.”
In the past, the weed department used 1% of mill levy funds from the Road Department for managing vegetation along county rights of way.
Englehart said there’s a pocket of money used for roadside weed management, but they don’t track how much money they spend on it.
Tall weeds along the roadside obstruct visibility, which poses a danger for everyone on the road: walkers, riders, drivers and wildlife.
“You drive along, and the weeds are bigger than the deer and some (deer) are getting hit because of it,” said Brad White, a former advisory board member and farmer in Pleasant View.
In Resolution 5-2023, it said that the county weed department “is 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.”
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.
Since roadside management halted, however, weeds were able to go to seed this year and impact previous progress.
“It 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’s a huge seed bank and they’re not doing anything about it, they don’t care to do anything about it,” Miles said.
“Unfortunately, weed management is a constant battle. And it’s everyone’s problem … you can lose all your gains in a hurry.”
