Applications in Roadsides

The South Carolina Department of Transportation is another organization committed to chemical side trimming. It uses chemical side trimming to control the growth of roadside limbs, in most cases after a mechanical treatment.

According to Jennifer Gruber, district vegetation manager for South Carolina DOT’s District Six, its chemical side trimming treatments have been a great success, resulting in much longer periods of limb suppression over mechanical trimming alone, thereby greatly reducing the need for mechanical trimming.

“We have had very good success with our chemical limb trimming program,” Gruber says. “Our goal is to use herbicide applications to suppress roadside limbs once they have been mechanically trimmed back to the right-of-way or treeline, and only using mechanical means when control can’t be achieved with herbicide.”

For the South Carolina DOT, chemical side trimming offers a variety of other benefits, as well. “It’s more economical than mechanical limb trimming due to the amount of equipment, personnel, traffic control and increased liability potential,” Gruber says. “Also, a herbicide application minimally impacts traffic since it’s a moving operation, which normally doesn’t require any lane closures. Our typical mechanical operation consists of a tractor with a boom-mounted rotary saw, two tractors with boom-mounted mowers for debris mulching or a chipper, and all the equipment and personnel required to close a lane and flag traffic. The herbicide application operation typically consists of one truck mounted with a herbicide injection unit.”

SCDOT likes using a dormant-stem treatment to help avoid leaf brownout. For this treatment, it uses a broadcast spray of Garlon^® 4 Ultra specialty herbicide at a rate of 1 gallon per acre, plus a pint of crop oil to increase penetration and an anti-drift adjuvant.

“Herbicide application is less intrusive than mechanical means and is also more selective of the vegetation that is impacted by the operation,” Gruber adds. “Our procedure for mechanically pruning the right-of-way often disturbs and impacts most of the vegetation in the area.”

A Plan for Continued Success

Much like Helena Chemical, SCDOT has been challenged with educating the public about its herbicide applications, including its innovative chemical side trim applications

“Although perceptions are gradually beginning to change, many times when the public sees SCDOT applying herbicide, they assume there are adverse environmental and personal effects associated,” Gruber says. “In reality, the herbicides we use are very low-toxicity formulations, which degrade very rapidly in the environment. We also utilize very conservative rates in our herbicide program and always use an anti-drift adjuvant.”

In addition, all SCDOT herbicide applicators hold Non-Commercial Pesticide Applicator’s Licenses with Category 6 (Right-of-Way) endorsements, and attend annual pesticide applicator refresher training.

“Our goal is to make herbicide applications to control limbs on a two- to three-year cycle,” Gruber says. “But we also will continue evaluating our routes before and after herbicide applications and keep thorough records to improve our program’s effectiveness and minimize adverse impacts to the environment.”

^®Trademark of Dow AgroSciences LLC When treating areas in and around roadside or utility rights-of-way that are or will be grazed, hayed or planted to forage, important label precautions apply regarding harvesting hay from treated sites, using manure from animals grazing on treated areas or rotating the treated area to sensitive crops. See the product label for details. State restrictions on the sale and use of Milestone apply. Consult the label before purchase or use for full details. Always read and follow label directions.

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