A reminder that a public meeting is being held at the Waitsfield Elementary School this Monday about the project approved by Waitsfield to treat knotweed, buckthorn and other abundant plants in the floodplain with herbicides and mowing.
This is a chance to speak out on this issue or simply to learn more about it.
The town will likely continue to tell the public that:
1) Contrary to the State of California and the World Health Organization the chemicals are safe.
2) Their private consultants have assured them that using chemicals is part of the only reasonable approach and they are convinced of this.
3) Knotweed and other abundant plant communities on the parcel in question are public enemy number one for the river and must be dealt with using whatever means necessary.
4) Knotweed doesn’t hold soil. (All the knotweed which was laid flat and submerged by July’s flood and has since popped back up and is growing again actually just magically stays held rooted in place).
They will likely continue to NOT report to the public some other relevant information including:
1) The many benefits of knotweed including nectary for honeybees and other pollinators as well as providing shade for the river where trees have been removed for roads and agriculture.
2) How knotweed is an excellent nutrient absorber and bank stabilizer. If knotweed wasn’t’ actually incredible at holding onto soil it wouldn’t occupy the niches it does –on steep road and river banks in the most disturbed areas of the landscape. Think about the claim that knotweed “doesn’t hold soil” for a minute with observations in mind about where it establishes itself, grows and disperses. Knotweed actually takes hold from root pieces (rhizomes) on raw exposed steep banks next to the river.
3) That plants are responses to ecosystem conditions such as erosion, nutrient loading, etc. Plants are symptoms of larger conditions not causes of the problems.
4) The futility of trying to reduce knotweed and other plants downstream of thousands of more plants from which new populations are delivered. Best practices in “invasive plant removal” is to always work from upstream down for obvious dispersal reasons.
5) What happens on the off chance that this project succeeds? Spray all the other knotweed in the river corridor? That would cost millions of dollars. This site represents less than 1% of the “invasive plant” population in the floodplain currently.
6) That glyphosate is not only a poison to non “native” plants but reaches many “non target” species as well including other broadleaf plants, as well as fungi and bacteria which make up the soil ecosystem that is needed to support ALL plants, including those ones we are not directly poisoning.
7) That Rodeo and Polaris – the chemicals the town has approved applying in the floodplain - are proprietary chemical blends whose “inactive” ingredients do not legally have to be disclosed and therefore are never tested.
8) That the proposed herbicide application site is less than ½ a mi½ upstream of: the elementary school, playing fields, and village with one of the most popular swimming holes in the Valley.
9) That NO other towns in this valley have set a precedent of applying herbicides on public land with public dollars, despite having the same “invasive plant problems.”
10) That glyphosate was invented by Monsanto and Rodeo is made by Dow Chemical, and that these two companies represent the most destructive corporate entities in the world. This project represents the most direct way that any town in this valley will have spent taxpayer dollars doing business with them.
What else could be done with the $6,400 which has been approved to spend on this project for the next two years?
1) Plant trees and reforest areas currently in needless mown lawn such as the acreage near Shaw’s. Make it a pubic orchard like we’ve done with the edge of Flemer Field (which has been successful and is now bearing fruit by the way). For 6400 dollars at least 150 trees could be planted, deer-protected and maintained for three years to get them established.
2) Address erosion upstream next to roads, from parking lots and from trails. This is where the problems in the floodplain originate and this is where we can actually do something about them. Seeding, swales, infiltration basins, constructed wetlands – all reduce erosion into the river and payoff in spades.
3) Weedwhack or scythe 5’ diameter rings around each new tree planting on this site 4-5 times a summer for 3-4 years until the trees move into the canopy and can easily compete with the knotweed for sunshine. Of course the ice and log debris can remove all this in one flood - that nagging fact that doing something in the floodplain is usually a fool's errand.

Oct 20, 2024, 10 AM to 4 PM

Oct 22, 2024, 9 AM to 3 PM

Oct 23, 2024, 12 to 1 PM