Editor’s note: The three-part series about the loss of Montezuma County’s noxious weed program was published in September. This is the original, uncut version.
Montezuma County’s noxious weed program once struggled to meet the bare minimum required by Colorado’s Noxious Weed Act, then with financial help grew for nearly a decade to become the envy of Southwest Colorado.
Between 2019 and 2022, the program was awarded $352,000 in grants, which were mostly matched by funds from landowners. Bonnie Anderson, the weed department director, was selected as 2022 Weed Manager of the Year.
That all ended in March.
Anderson was fired in October. And this year, the county commissioners approved a weed management plan so unpalatable to its noxious weed advisory board – made up of six weed experts – the entire board resigned.
“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.”
The resignation forced the Board of County Commissioners to absorb the role.
“Any time there’s a board not functioning, the commissioners basically end up having to take over that task. We’ve got so many other priorities, that it’s kind of fallen very low, to the very, very lowest priority that you could possibly deal with,” said County Commissioner Jim Candelaria.
The new noxious weeds director is James Dietrich. He doubles as the natural resources planning and public lands coordinator.
“She had such a terrific program going,” said Brad White, a former advisory board member and a farmer in Pleasant View. “We were hoping we could find someone to step in her shoes and keep it going, but it completely went flat.”
One full-time staff, the only applicant for the job, is dedicated to the noxious weed department. He has little to no experience in the field, but Dietrich said he holds promise.
“That’s the biggest milestone right now, because we were just flat no capacity when everybody left,” Dietrich said.
In the wake of the department’s exodus, its successful programs were cut.
“We were finding that expenses were outpacing revenues,” said Travis Anderson, the county administrator. He is not related to Bonnie Anderson.
“Unfunded mandates from the state of Colorado are just tough to deal with because where do we get the funds?” said Candelaria.
Last year, it spent about $12,000 less than it was expected to.
As far as individual programs go, in 2023, the Phreatophyte Project got $96,963 in grant funding; its expenses were just under half that. That project even made the Road Department about $10,000.
The noxious weed department got its funding from three sources: the county road department’s mill levy, the general fund and outside funding such as grants.
“When Bonnie got in there, she … got a lot of grant funding and increased the program without a burden on the landowners or the county” said Eddy Lewis, the owner of Southwest Weed Control and an advisory board member for 26 years.
In March, the county decided to take the program back to what the statute says.
“That’s where we’re going with the program,” said Candelaria. “It’s just to what the statute says we have to do.”
The county has other, pressing priorities to spend its money on. Public safety, for example, ranks higher on the agenda than weeds, Candelaria said.
“We are the second-lowest-paid agency in the state of Colorado,” said Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin. “I am 17% behind the number of deputies for the per capita that we have. I’m only running two deputies a shift, and they’re working 12-hour shifts.”
The board recently cut the public safety budget by more than $1 million.
“When they found that Kinder Morgan and other taxes were dropping, and they couldn’t meet the budget with the amount we had to have, they decided to make major cuts,” Nowlin said.
One source of revenue for Montezuma County is property taxes, which makes up 18.11% of its total revenue. A little more than half of that 18.11% comes from Kinder Morgan Inc. and its carbon dioxide operation.
In other words, about 9% of the county’s total revenue comes from Kinder Morgan – not more than half its total revenue, like Commissioner Kent Lindsay mistakenly said while discussing the county budget at the Dec. 28 board meeting.
“You’re just saying, ‘Hey, I want you to grow a program,’ and I’m saying, ‘Well, I don’t have enough money to grow the program,’” said Candelaria. “So we just washed our hands of the whole thing.”
What’s more, the county’s general fund brought in $3.7 million last year.
Grant money made things like the Phreatophyte Project and Backpack Sprayer Loaner Program possible. Such funds paid for equipment and two additional full-time workers.
“She (Anderson) was pretty zealous in her job there,” said Lewis. “It ruffled some feathers, and unfortunately it was some of the wrong feathers. The whole program got squashed by it.”
Priorities are priorities, though, and there’s only so much money to go around.
Timeline
1970: The first Russian olive and saltcedars (non-native phreatophytes) identified in Montezuma County, about 25 acres.
1980: 78 acres of non-native phreatophytes in the county.
1990: Colorado Noxious Weed Act passed; 241 acres of non-native phreatophytes in Montezuma County.
2000: 749 acres of non-native phreatophytes.
2014: Bonnie Anderson hired into the noxious weed department.
2017: 7,080 acres of non-native phreatophytes. The noxious weed department used satellite imagery to generate Russian olive and saltcedar population data this year.
2019: Non-native Phreatophyte Removal Project begins. In the years to come, it will remove 60,566 Russian olives and 63,671 saltcedars (tamarisk) off of 595 acres in the county.
2019: Colorado Water Conservation Board started contributing to the Non-native Phreatophyte Removal Project. In years to come, it will give the county $211,764 in grant funding for the phreatophye project. The CDA started contributing grant funding this year, too. In years to come, their grant funding reaches $130,000.
2019: Water Supply Reserve Fund awarded $16,840 in grant funding; MCNWD purchases first mulcher.
2019/22: The Noxious Weed Department is awarded $352,000 in grant funding.
2022: Bonnie Anderson awarded Weed Manager of the Year.
2022/23: USFS Drought Stimulus Grant awards MCNWD’s phreatophyte project $50,000. Another $60,000 came through during this time from the disaster relief fund.
2023: Six phreatophyte removal projects scheduled, funded by RCPP. Before this, RCPP reimbursed eight properties for the inital phreatophyte removal.
2023: Resolution 5-2023 says “Montezuma County is required to control all listed noxious weeds that occur on rights-of-way by state law.”
October 2023: Bonnie Anderson fired from the Montezuma County Noxious Weed Department.
Dec. 28, 2023: Special BOCC Meeting where Kent Lindsay said half the budget comes from Kinder Morgan.
Feb. 22, 2024: The Noxious Weed Advisory Board asks the BOCC not to move weed management on the roadsides to the Road Department, on account of their “already busy workload.”
March 26, 2024: Board of County Commissioners approve 2024 Noxious Weed Plan.
End of March, early April: The entire Noxious Weed Advisory Board resigns.
May 22, 2024: Road and Bridge Department advertises to receive bids for roadside weed spraying in The Journal.
June 4, 2024: Bid window for roadside spraying closes. The Road Department received two bids: One from Bonnie Anderson, the former weed director, for $90,000. The other bid was from Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. for $450,000. Both were denied.
End of August 2024: The county’s final phreatophyte project is finishing deep in McElmo Canyon.
State Sen. Cleave Simpson, the Republican from Alamosa who sits on the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, says weeds are not an easy sale in Denver.
“Much like the counties, at the state level, there are so many priorities to focus on. To try to get legislators excited about noxious weeds is a bit of a challenge,” Simpson told The Journal.
“I’m hopeful through the Department of Agriculture there’s a mechanism or a tool or an idea or something to ring more sense of urgency to how the state deals with noxious weeds.”
The Noxious Weed Act says the county must appoint a local advisory board, which it no longer has. It also requires them to manage List A and targeted List B species, and to manage noxious weeds in public rights of way, said Olga Robak, the director of communications and public awareness at the Colorado Department of Agriculture in an email.
In the 2024 noxious weed plan, the county commissioners moved management of weeds along county rights of way to the Road and Bridge Department.
Suddenly, roadside spraying stopped.
“They never once said I had to spray the roads,” said Rob Englehart, the superintendent of the county’s Road and Bridge Department.
Englehart said if they’re mowing along the roads and pick up some weeds along the way, that’s great, but it’s not a requirement.
Mowing can have a positive impact on managing noxious weeds. But “when used alone, it rarely has a positive long-range effect due to the excellent survival ability of noxious weeds,” according to a 2014 county resolution.
That’s why doubling up with roadside spraying is helpful.
The former advisory board asked the commissioners not to move weed management to the road department in a letter on Feb. 22, and recommended a work calendar so they could “coordinate the efforts of both departments as they overlap.”
“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.
Earlier this year, the county road department advertised a bid request for “the treatment of noxious weeds on approximately 900 lane miles of roadway edges within Montezuma County.”
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 rejected.
A previous resolution emphasized 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.”
Previous resolutions supported compliance to roadside weed management.
“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,” a 2014 resolution said.
“Montezuma County is required to control all listed noxious weeds that occur on rights-of-way by state law,” said 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 and Bridge Department for managing vegetation along county rights of way.
Englehart confirmed 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, posing 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,” White said.
There are more that 300 species of weeds on the State Noxious Weed List. They’re divvied up into three lists: A, B and C. List A weeds must be eradicated, List B must be managed and List C weeds fall under “recommended management.”
Under the 01990 Noxious Weed Act, the county is supposed to have an advisory board, though “the local governing body shall have the sole and final authority to approve, modify, or reject the management plan.”
“I characterize it as an unfunded mandate from the state that said ‘we don’t have any funding to help you.’ It makes it kind of hard to prioritize,” Simpson said.
Still, Montezuma County created a well-funded program that inspired other counties in their own weed management, Lewis said.
“A lot of it depends on county commissioners at the time. I’ve seen this in La Plata County and other counties too,” said Lewis. “If you lose their (commissioners) backing, the program is probably going to die.”
Oma Fleming, the manager of a mandatory weed control district in Dolores County, echoed Lewis’s point when asked how high of a priority managing weeds ought to be for a county.
“I guess that depends on your commissioners,” said Fleming. “I have commissioners that are farmers, they know what the weeds do.”
Noxious weeds are deemed noxious because they have competitive advantages over more desirable species. They crowd out native species and outcompete them, creating monocultures, which destroys diversity. Lack of diversity directly impacts wildlife.
“The reason they are noxious is because they are that aggressive. They can move in, take over your land. I wouldn’t say ruin your land, but completely change its ability to produce, forage or anything beneficial,” said Walt Henes, a former advisory board member and owner of Southwest Seed Inc.
When looking at noxious weeds that infest profitable land in Montezuma County – nearly 50,000 of 1.24 million acres – that’s used for things like growing wheat, corn, grass, hay, raising alfalfa, water, rangeland and forest, the county stands to suffer a $5.1 million loss.
“It impacts everybody,” said Miles. “From the small acreage landowners to the large farmers and ranchers. It’s not just, you know, the farming community it impacts. It impacts everybody.”
Cheatgrass, for example, “is highly flammable, and as it has expanded, the extent and frequency of fire in the Great Basin has increased by as much as 200%,” according to U.S. Geological Services.
Resources in the fight against noxious weeds have declined even for the do-it-yourselfer.
Just last year, the county’s weed program had a Backpack Sprayer Loaner Program, which cost residents $20 to rent a sprayer, covering the cost of the program. The program provided training about herbicides and how to use the sprayer.
The department also oversaw the Nonnative Phreatophyte Removal Project, which mitigated landowners’ cost of removing Russian olive and saltcedar trees.
A private contractor doing the same kind of excavation and treatment work charges roughly $1,750 per acre; the weed department did it for $805 per acre, and costs were projected to drop after the department secured the necessary equipment.
Nonnative phreatophytes are List B species – which requires them to be managed – and are especially concerning because of their water consumption and their impacts on agriculture and wildfire risk.
A single saltcedar or Russian olive can consume nearly 200 gallons of water a day. Where Russian olives and saltcedars grow densely, they can consume almost 1.5 million gallons of water each year. Groups of salt cedar increase salinity in water and soil, creating agricultural problems, according to a presentation from the noxious weed department.
Phreatophytes promote mosquito breeding grounds, decrease bird diversity, change stream bank dynamics and harm native fish populations, the Colorado Department of Agriculture said in a letter supporting Montezuma County’s Phreatophyte Project on Sept. 22, 2021.
“The longer we wait to restore the land from these two species, the more difficult and expensive it will become,” the CDA wrote.
The roughly 7,800 acres of non-native phreatophytes in Montezuma County take in an estimated 35,956 acre-feet of water every year, more than Narraguinnep Reservoir’s capacity of 22,000 acre-feet.
This project received $375,940 in grant funding from the Regional Conservation Partnership Program for agriculture-designated properties since it started in 2019.
With this money, the team removed 60,566 Russian olives and 63,671 saltcedars from 595 acres in Montezuma County. That removal saved an estimated 4,754-acre feet of water – again, there are many variables in the calculation – which is enough to fill 2,347 Olympic-size swimming pools.
When left untreated, populations of Russian olives and saltcedars increase by 75% every five years. Montezuma County has 100,000 suitable acres where they can thrive – waterways, riparian areas and irrigated fields.
In addition to the Backpack Sprayer Loaner Program and Phreatophyte Project, the weed department formerly prioritized enforcement.
Not all counties have weed enforcement policies, but counties are supposed to uphold the Noxious Weed Act.
Enforcement is key in upholding the act, and mapping noxious weeds is central to enforcement.
The department used to send notices to landowners whose properties were infested with noxious weeds. If the landowner didn’t reply within a certain window of time, the department would get an inspection warrant and possibly go spray themselves.
This kind of enforcement is made legal under the state’s Noxious Weed Act and past county resolutions.
Bonnie Anderson, the former weed manager, used GIS mapping to help landowners recognize and target weeds on their property.
“Some of the people she went and enforced, some of them came back and thanked her,” said White. “She saved their property.”
Complying with enforcement is made financially viable for landowners with the county’s Cost Share Program, which does just that: It shares up to 50% of the cost of the herbicide with the private landowner.
The program is made possible by a $20,000 Colorado Department of Agriculture grant and a $10,000 county match.
It’s the only one still up and running.
As it stands, there is no capacity in the weed department to go to people’s houses or send out notices requiring people to manage their weeds.
The county cut out its Backpack Sprayer Loaner Program, and the Nonnative Phreatophyte Removal Project is finishing up its final project now in McElmo Canyon, Dietrich said.
The department is now also targeting only List A – not List B – species, which must be eradicated, Dietrich said.
With cost share – the only remaining program – landowners are expected to turn in a map of their property and circle where they’ve sprayed weeds.
This is the only mapping of noxious weeds happening now in the county.
“They sort of, sometimes do that. The mapping is just based off what I can determine from what comes in,” said Dietrich. “It’s just not going to be hyper-accurate. We’re basically relying on people to self-report and, as you can imagine how that goes, it’s not real well.”
At an undefined, future date, the weed technician will start driving roads to do mapping, but it’s all ocular, Dietrich said.
“That’s kind of a problem, identifying things that are, say, 400 yards away from the road. That gets really hard. I mean, you can use binoculars but jeez, it’s pretty tough. Unless you’ve got a really big patch of something that’s fairly identifiable,” Dietrich said.
Robak at the CDA underscored that “local programs are vital to an effective statewide strategy,” because the state depends on smaller county departments to submit annual maps tracking noxious weeds in its area.
Candelaria said it’s the property owner’s responsibility to manage weeds on their property.
“We need to do the outreach and the education, but it’s your responsibility, not mine,” said Candelaria. “If you purchased it and you own it, good stewardship starts with you.”
A 2014 resolution echoed that “ownership of private property assumes management and stewardship of the land.”
“You could Google any weed you have, and you could probably find it. I fail to see people don’t have any avenues for knowing what kind of species that they have,” Candelaria said.
Still, residents mighty not realize their land is infested or what that means for their property, Henes said.
“If you want to put a couple of cows on your 20-acre parcel and you find out that the vegetation is Russian knapweed or Canadian thistle, the value for your animals is gone,” Henes said.
As far as responsibility on county lands, they still manage weeds on county properties, like the fairgrounds. Education remains a priority to help landowners manage weeds on their own.
This winter, the weed technician will get more familiar with the role and develop programs to start working with people in spring, Dietrich said.
“To eliminate or decrease the current level of management makes it much harder and expensive to recover in the future,” the former advisory board wrote. “Going backward would likely erase ongoing successes.”
