Weed Warriors Spread The Word Urge Idaho Lawmakers To Put $1 Tax On Tires To Fund Hawkweed Control Efforts

Idaho’s fight against noxious weeds has been waged for decades in a half-hearted way along county road right-of-ways.

County weed control employees traditionally have done little more than spend their summers spraying herbicides.

But it’s becoming more apparent that the weed invasion isn’t limited to roadside ditches.

“We’re getting more and more rather devastating infestations,” said Harry Eder of Benewah County, a landowner who founded the Hawkweed Action Coalition. “While we have a lot of technology and a lot of interest in this sort of thing … it all comes apart with the fact that we don’t have funding for it.”

That could change if Eder and others on the front lines of the weed war have their way.

The Hawkweed Action Coalition is pushing for the state to set up a trust fund for weed control projects and is circulating a resolution around the state seeking support for the idea.

Meanwhile, Rep. Wayne Meyer, R-Rathdrum, is sponsoring a bill that would revive a $1 tire tax to raise money for weed control. The tax ended last year.

In the past, the money went toward cleaning up old tire dumps. Now, Meyer would like to see it go toward a coordinated effort to fight noxious weeds statewide.

Weeds spread at a rate of 14 percent a year if they’re not controlled. And they don’t just threaten farmers’ fields. Noxious weeds have taken over more than 1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management grazing and wildlife habitat in Idaho alone.

“We have a lot of public lands with noxious weeds and, if we don’t try to curtail them pretty soon, they’ll start spreading even worse,” he said.

The reason Meyer is suggesting a tire tax is because vehicles are common culprits in spreading weeds.

“They get hooked into the wheels and the undercarriage,” he explained.

Meyer estimates the tax could raise a little over $1 million a year, which would be administered by the Department of Agriculture and go toward coordinated weed control efforts.

“Finally, I think we’re getting this thing off dead center,” said Glen Secrist, the state Department of Agriculture’s bureau chief of vegetative management. “It’s finally on the radar screen.”

Secrist envisions Meyer’s proposal raising money for a state position to coordinate weed control efforts statewide, a project to map noxious weeds in the state and identify problem areas, and public education of the problem.

The revenue also could help establish full-time weed superintendents in every county - “not someone who goes out and pushes snow in the winter,” he said.

The left-over funds, which would be several hundred thousand dollars, could be distributed among the state’s 44 counties for specific projects.

But county efforts alone won’t quell the exponential spread of hawkweed, spotted knapweed and other tenacious, exotic plants.

Under Idaho law, landowners are responsible for controlling their weeds and the county is responsible for enforcing that law. But solving the weed problem is so expensive and complex, that counties have little incentive to enforce the law.

County commissioners are reluctant to lean on a landowner who can’t control his weeds because they keep invading from next door.

“The noxious weed law, as it operates in Idaho, is a paper tiger,” Eder said. “When I found I was being infested with this weed (hawkweed) by my neighbor, it turned out my neighbor was the state of Idaho.”

Hawkweed has claimed more than 355,000 acres in Benewah County.

Further hampering efforts is the fact that the state, unlike other Northwest states, has no coordinated statewide plan or strategy for combating weeds.

Secrist, Eder and others believe one key ingredient to successful weed management is to get the counties, state agencies, federal agencies and private landowners to all work together on a regional scale.

In November, counties, agencies and landowners launched the Panhandle Weed Management Area, a coordinated group effort to pool resources and plan an attack on the region’s weeds.

The other key ingredient is money.

Now, counties have few resources to contribute to expensive projects, such as biological controls - setting loose insects that feed on a particular noxious weed.

Kootenai County’s weed control budget has stayed between $160,000 and $190,000 for several years, said county administrator Tom Taggart. Most of it comes from property taxes.

While Meyer’s proposed bill would funnel more money into counties and launch a better coordinated statewide weed control effort, Eder believes the best approach is one that Montana took years ago.

Using a $1.50 tax on vehicle licenses, Montana raised $2.5 million for a trust fund. The interest from that trust fund, and the license plate fee, has provided an average of $1.5 million per year for weed control projects and research.

A state advisory committee chooses which projects to fund and makes recommendations to the director of the state Department of Agriculture.

“In areas where we have these grant projects going, we can definitely see a reduction in the weeds,” said Harold Stepper, Montana’s noxious weed coordinator.

At a statewide meeting this last week, the Idaho Weed Control Association was reluctant to adopt a resolution calling for a similar Idaho weed trust fund, as proposed by the Hawkweed Action Committee.

“We felt it was too confining,” said association president Carl Crabtree of Grangeville. Instead, they passed a resolution calling for more state funding, without specifics on how to raise revenue.

Ben Marsh, a former weed superintendent for Benewah County, said if people knew how devastating weeds are and how fast they spread, they wouldn’t mind getting taxed a little to fight them.

“If people were to see it as a cancer on the face of Mother Earth, and we’re the surgeons …” he said. “We know what to do, but it costs money to do it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo