Vol. 15—1961 - NorthEastern Weed Science Society

442.
There is a matter of judgment of the extent of our treatment.
We can cover more area than essential and thereby. defeat our
program of economy. There is also the. possibility of misuse of
materials, for example not long ago it was found that 2, 4, 5-T
was being used for control of weeds susceptibl,e to 2-4D.
All the preceding are considerations that enter into the
development of a program of effective use of herbicides to assure
efficient control while obviating damage to plants that should
be preserved and eliminating claims which are not only costly in
themselves but possibly even more costly in their nuisance value.
It takes time to sell a herbicide program. There is the natural
reluctance of adminis trators to adopt a tool which has not to
their knowledge and in their own experience been proven. There
is the problem of justifying what seems like an additional expense
to the officials responsible for disbursement of funds.
Within the organization of any agency at~empting herbicide
work there must be personnel wi th the nece saar-y knowledge, competence
and time to direct that work. There must be planning not
only of daily operation but of yearly programming. There must
be a definite assignment of responsibility and ~uthority. There
must be adequate supervision by competent personnel. Actual
work must be done by trained personnel. There should be an
unbiased appraisal of results not only of the·current year's work
but of previous work. There should be evaluation of the results
with consideration at the same time of costs preferably with
oomparisons being made more than state wide.
To provide information of the present policies of the Northeastern
states highway departments we requested the offioial
responsible for the herbicide program in each of the states to
provide us a statement of the policy of his department. The
information obtained was assembled in tabular form and sent to
each of the offioials requesting correction of errors or .amiss ..
ions. The final tabulation is appended. Under the heading of
"Regulation" is given tho governing polioies set up at a high
level as distinot from the practices recommended at lower levels.
For those of us who have followed the development of tho use of
herbicides by the highway departments it is interesting to note
that most of these departments now he,va a broad program and that
the volume of work has been increased significantly. In the
~uthor~t opinion thore are two observations of particular
interest. The first is that there is a relatively small amount
of regulation at a higher level. The other observation is that
it would seem that as a program develops more regulation at a
higher level is to be expected.