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Council has oversight of the spraying, unless pollution results, when the DEQ will step in, officials said.
VDOT says that it sprays with great care and concern. For example, Watson said, VDOT marks vineyards along the roadsides on maps for the contractors, who are instructed to stop spraying a quarter of a mile in each direction from the vineyard “on the chance that the chemicals might drift,” said Watson.
Such is Watson’s concern for the environment he controls, he makes surprise visits to the sprayers two to three times a week to insure that they are in compliance.
“If they are not doing the job right, we would see evidence of a problem, and there is no problem,” said Watson. He assures that VDOT has not had “any disasters, no off-target spraying, no calls from people with complaints.”
Surprise visit
When the Rappahannock News made a “surprise visit” last week on Route 211 where a contractor was spraying in the median, a workman, standing knee deep in weeds with a hose in his hand that was attached to a large white tank on a truck, was hardly “spot spraying” the thistles, unless the whole mass of vegetation in the divider was thistles, a suggestion which seemed improbable.
It seemed to be an instance of good intentions gone bananas, as if the contractor and the man with the nozzle were being paid according to the volume of chemicals sprayed, as opposed to the numbers of thistles that were being eradicated.
This would not necessarily be a problem if not for the presence in the medians of wild flowers, some of which are basically weeds, too, and will be killed along with the thistles if the spraying turns indiscriminate. “It would take a lot of 'em out,” said Watson, if the spraying went overboard.
The thistle-spraying work will come to a close in “another week,” said Watson.
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