|
Tony wrote:
"...the removal of trees and vegetation from the landscape is the direct cause of soil erosion, silting and flooding of low lying parts of the country and that many of these problems can be controlled by man if he were to replace this vegetation that then acts like a sponge in absorbing the rain and thus releasing it slowly into the streams and rivers which in turn prevents erosion and flooding " My thought as I lay soaking in a hot bath was that at your next committee meeting you could introduce this and draw to his attention that someone may wish to sue his butt off for causing flooding to occur due to his insistence on spraying drains. Gil wrote: ...As a direct result of my work, many millions of trees are planted on roadsides, mine sites and industrial sites as weed control. There are the obvious side effects of large numbers of trees and many people now claim it as their own, but what is good is that there a huge numbers of trees going in the ground and less room for weeds and the loss on the need for chemicals. "Plant a thousand trees and save a drum of chemicals each year for ever". Right now I'm trying to practice Mozart's Cminor Mass which he mercilessly has written in phrases in tricky timing that change in whole and half steps that are too similar for my poor auditory memory to remember without just memorizing the poop out of it! The thoughts of Randy's attack and the fact that the chair who was a woman didn't call him for being rude to a guest so that he got away with it intrudes so much that I can't sing the "Jesu Christe" correctly even at a slow speed. I wish I had it in me to sue the man for anything. All I can do is hope that he gets his comeuppance somehow. I just want the memory of it all to fade away. It's extremely painful and by getting away with this he intimidates the Weed Supervisor who started out as a fair, honest guy and is now learning to find nice things to say about this man, and who now advises me to keep my grant report short, and that all our research which he encouraged at the beginning of the summer is not relevant, and not to mention BD. I would pull out of all this, but I have to make sure they don't put 2,4-D on the road. Your thought about bare soil and erosion is good, Tony, but Randy didn't invent the practice of spending all the county weed budget on herbicide and nothing on revegetation. They don't understand the importance of wholistic land management and they keep trying to take care of the symptoms instead of improving the soil and revegetating. County government has been making these faulty budget decisions for years because of lowest common denominator politics. I still have some white and red clover seed left and I hope to put it on all the bare spots on the road right-of-way. Next year we'll continue to revegetate. That's probably the most useful thing we can do with the state money. Gil, they are making similar mistakes about trees. Our area gets 35-40 inches of rainfall a year and Spokane gets 15-20. They have logged every bit of private land for short-term profit. Now they are taking small diameter trees out of private land. They leave so many trees per acre to be uprooted by the wind. They take 95% of the trees. They sometime replant when they have to. The old clear-cuts haven't reseeded themselves and some have been planted three times to no avail. It greatly affects the watersheds, but there isn't much work in this beautiful rural area and if people don't have any income, they log their places. It's one of the few ways they can get hold of large amounts of cash. What would you suggest that we do to ameliorate this? Tim, the Public Works Director and the Road Boss did an excellent job resurfacing our road. Where the logging trucks had broken up the chip seal, they rototilled it and mixed portland cement with it as an underlayment and finished with asphalt. Where the road is not paved at all, they built up the surface by mixing calcium chloride with gravel and dirt to hold moisture and keep down the dust. The weather gets colder the farther up into the mountains the road goes and the winter freeze-thaw cycles really reek havoc with the road surface. They finished off with crushed rock on the edges where there was then a big drop-off into the ditches. Some of our revegetation work was covered up and we'll have to do it again. (Another problem with government is that there is poor communication among the various departments.) Seeing the road and the right-of-way improved without chemicals is very gratifying and something I can do for the community. The 300 families living off this road appreciate the improved road conditions. I'm afraid everyone thinks revegetation is a luxury, but it would save the county money if they would do the rights-of-way right. Thanks for the good thoughts. They help and it helps me just to carry on like this about the road. Best wishes, Merla
Hi Merla I am part way through reading Philip Confords book 'The Organic Tradition' an anthology of writings on organic farming 1900-1950. as I read the chapter on water wind and soil erosion I thought of your problems with road side spraying and the cause it was having on the environment. A resume of the chapter states "that the removal of trees and vegetation from the landscape is the direct cause of soil erosion, silting and flooding of low lying parts of the country and that many of these problems can be controlled by man if he were to replace this vegetation that then acts like a sponge in absorbing the rain and thus releasing it slowly into the streams and rivers which inturn prevents erosion and flooding " My thought as I lay soaking in a hot bath was that at your next committee meeting you could introduce this and draw to his attention that someone may wish to sue his but off for causing flooding to occur due to his insistence on spraying drains . Just a thought maybe you can developed it further ,Cheers Tony Robinsonwho has been doing to much thinking lately. |
