Sebastopol to fight weed by hand
Residents volunteer to yank pepperweed out of Laguna after foundation pulls herbicide planWednesday, March 2, 2005
By Carol Benfell, The Press DemocratDozens of Sebastopol residents volunteered Tuesday to pull a pernicious weed in Laguna Park by hand after a proposal to spray herbicides was unexpectedly withdrawn.
The move pleased critics of spraying and at least temporarily saved Sebastopol City Council members from casting a politically difficult vote.
Sebastopol, one of the nation's few cities with a Green Party council majority, has an ordinance prohibiting pesticide and herbicide spraying on city property.
But some experts say that pepperweed, an exotic plant quickly spreading through the Laguna de Santa Rosa, can only be controlled by spraying or flooding.
The state and the nonprofit Laguna Foundation already have secured permission for hand-spraying of pepperweed clusters on 10 acres outside Sebastopol and had approached the City Council seeking to spray 2 acres in Laguna Park on the northeast edge of town.
But faced with loud local opposition, Anna Sears, research director for the foundation, said she wanted to give volunteers a chance to eradicate pepperweed in the park.
"The Laguna Foundation is committed to protecting the health of the Laguna and this means getting rid of the pepperweed," she said. "But if there is sufficient community interest to take on a no-spray effort, the Laguna Foundation would like to withdraw its request for . .. herbicide spraying."
A stunned silence in the council meeting room greeted Sears' remarks, followed by applause from the 70 people who turned out for the hearing.
People raised their hands in support and waved garden gloves to signal their willingness to volunteer.
Councilman Craig Litwin, one of the Green Party members, helped broker the deal. After it was announced, he began circulating a sign-up list for volunteers to help pull the weeds, which can grow 6 feet tall with roots 10 feet deep.
Mayor Larry Robinson, another Green Party council member, applauded the compromise.
"We have an incredible opportunity to demonstrate what we can do as a community, to demonstrate non-toxic alternatives," he said. "My sincere wish is that all of us will stay with this through the long haul and show that this can work."
Pepperweed, Lepedium latifolium, is an especially aggressive weed. Its spread threatens the survival of native plant species from the edge of the Laguna to outlying oak woodlands and ranches, Sears said.
She warned the happy audience that hand-pulling has never successfully eradicated pepperweed. But she said Sebastopol has a window of opportunity because the infestation remains small.
"Compared to ludwigia," another weed spreading in the Laguna, Sears said, "the problem is still within the scale of human endeavor."
Sears said the foundation, which is working to restore the Laguna de Santa Rosa, a natural draining system in the Russian River flood plain, will work with volunteers to make the eradication effort as effective and environmentally sensitive as possible.
"The Laguna Foundation will continue to map and monitor pepperweed in the (park)," she said. "If the volunteer effort doesn't seem to be working - if people stop coming out - and if the pepperweed continues to spread, we will come back and ask the council to vote (to spray)."
Sears didn't set a firm deadline for deciding whether to return to the council, saying that will depend on the success of the volunteer effort.
Pepperweed is a fast-growing immigrant from Europe and Asia. It drives out native species by its aggressive growth and because its roots bring up salt ions from the underground water supply, making the earth too saline for other plants to grow.
It also interferes with the regeneration of riparian trees such as willows and cottonwoods, and reduces the nesting frequency of waterfowl.
In one Oregon wildlife preserve, Sears said, pepperweed has overtaken all other plants to become the only living plant species on 20,000 acres.
Asked when the hand-pulling project would begin in Laguna Park, Sears smiled and said it was up to the Sebastopol volunteers.
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