More residents complain about bare-ground spray along roads

The application of a bare-ground herbicide around culverts and intersections alongside paved county roads left areas like this in 2025. The county's noxious weed director said his department is following a different tactic this year. (Journal file photo)

By Charlene Sims, Journal staff

LCJeditor@icloud.com

MOUND CITY – Several residents from the Blue Mound area talked with the Linn County commissioners on Monday, June 8, about their concerns with the aesthetics and erosion issues involved with roadsides that were sprayed with bare-ground herbicide to kill Johnson grass last year.

Mack Carlisle, who met with the commissioners on May 18 about the erosion problems, brought pictures of areas that his son had taken on Memorial Day 2026 that showed the areas that were bare-ground sprayed last year.

Carlisle said that as a retired wildlife biologist of the Army Corps of Engineers, that he was concerned about the erosion that was taking place in those sprayed areas. He also expressed his concerns about the chemicals running into the waterways, which eventually go into the Marais des Cygnes or Little Osage rivers.

Carlisle added, “Our farmers have done a pretty good job, in my opinion, of corralling the runoff using terraces and various types of drains and such. But when you’re using road ditches to get rid of the water, you don’t have much choice, that water has got to go somewhere. And if there’s chemicals in it, that’s not particularly a desirable situation.

John Sluder, a retired Heartland employee, said that he had sprayed substations, pole yards and parking lots and it is always bare-ground herbicide. Those herbicides sterilize the ground to keep the vegetation out of the substations and pole yards.

“They’re using bare ground stuff because it’s supposed to kill the ground for at least a year,” Sluder said. “That’s the guarantee if you apply at the correct rates, and I just don’t understand why we would be doing this.

“And even, like some of our yards. I mow clear to the ditch, clear to the road in places. And yet, it still got sprayed with this supposedly growth regulator maybe. And I don’t understand why. I’m just frustrated that it’s got this bad because now the county’s going to have to have to do something because these are going to wash out so bad. We’re going to have to start hauling rock and filling these back in.”                                                                

Sluder said he noticed that the bare-ground treatment is only used on the paved county roads and that he hadn’t seen it on gravel roads.

“You can still spray these areas and use a weak broadleaf (herbicide) and not kill the grass,” he said. “You know they say it’s hard to mow. Well grass generally doesn't get over waist high at most. Where your weeds are a lot worse, where your brush is. Use a broadleaf spray and then you wouldn’t have to deal with getting the wash out. You still have the grass.”

John Wilson told the commissioners that he mowed the roadside in front of his house and that area was sprayed. He said now the suppression stuff is starting to green up a little bit on the edges where its rained but in the very bottom of the ditch it is dead.

“Where they were going after Johnson grass, well they kill that spot ,and it’s still dead for like four years,” Wilson said. “And I could see that because it’s getting rid of the rhizomes and everything. But there are so many of those spots and some of them I’m not so sure there was even any Johnson grass there in the first place.

“And then on the intersections I can see where you can kind of kill, you know, and trying to keep somebody from getting killed on the road. But to just be spraying in your yards like that when especially when whoever’s running the truck can see the lawn mower mowed it.”                                                           

At the May 18 meeting, Noxious Weed Director Johnny Taylor had explained, “Both in 2024 and 2025, I spoke with my supervisors. In 2024 it was Shaun West, in 2025 it was Jesse Walton, about the complaints most of which were from a lack of mowing."

He said a shortage of personnel and broken down equipment led to the decision to use the bare ground approach.

Taylor said both years it was a joint decision and commissioners last year were also informed that, to satisfy the numerous complaints of residents, the noxious weed department would use bare-ground mix, which was the most effective spray method to eradicate Johnson grass infestations on roadsides throughout the county.

“Some of those areas of Johnson grass infestation that were sprayed last year can still be seen this spring,” Taylor said. “But for the record, we have done zero bare ground spraying of any roadsides in 2026. As a matter of fact, this spring spray season, we have started what is referred to as a ‘plant growth regulator ‘program.”

“I guess publicly we can just discuss that we’re taking care of a few things internally,” Commission Chair Alison Hamilton told the speakers. “Also the direction from the commission would be an expectation for the county to mow everything twice a year, and we’re going to work towards that a little bit harder.

“The other part to that after looking at the photos I don’t know. Do we have a legal obligation to repair and fix or is that the right of way?”

County Counselor Jacklyn Paletta said that it would depend on the landowners believing that the spray damaged their property.