Mowing along county roads begins today, two weeks after completion of the year’s first spraying of chemicals to promote coverage by beneficial grass.

For the past about 10 years the county has contracted with a spraying company to use herbicides to target weeds along part or all of just about every county road, said Richard Winans, Warren County road manager.

“I can’t think of any road that they don’t touch on,” Winans said.

For nine of those 10 years, the contractor has been SprayMAX Inc. The company handles the Warren County contract from its Monroe, La., district office and charges a base bid plus add-ons.

Two sprayings a year are usually done. This year’s first spraying ended about two weeks ago and covered 378 miles of the county’s 426 miles of road, Winans said.

Each spraying takes one SprayMAX employee about two weeks to complete and uses about 35,000 gallons of herbicide solution, said SprayMAX’s Monroe district manager, Alex Smalling.

About 10 to 12 percent of the right of way on county roads is maintained to the side of the road or street by property owners themselves, Winans said. Spraying is not done in those places, he said.

Five different herbicide products are used. Each has been approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and certified safe when used properly, Smalling said.

At least one Warren County resident, however, expressed skepticism over such claims by government and industry. A lifelong resident of Campbell Swamp Road, Dale Wallace, expressed “concern and mistrust.” He believes herbicide sprayed on his southern Warren County property before the county began its program resulted in deaths to farm animals.

The spray-truck driver controls the amount and mix of the products sprayed based on the amounts and types of plants growing where he is spraying, Smalling said. Different herbicides are designed to kill different types of plants. The truck is equipped with a radar system that automatically adjusts the flow rate of chemicals to the speed the truck is traveling for precise application, he added.

The main reason for spraying is to promote the coverage of more area by Bermudagrass. The grass doesn’t grow as high as some other grasses and weeds so it’s less likely to obstruct drivers’ views. And it grows deep roots that are good for slowing erosion, especially important in Warren County where loess soil is common.

The chemical mixes can both target weeds to minimize Bermudagrass’ competition for coverage area and retard the growth of the Bermudagrass itself, reducing the frequency of the need to mow the grass, Smalling said.

The potential for the county to save on mowing costs and the county’s terrain itself were factors in the decision the board of supervisors made about 10 years ago to begin countywide spraying, Winans said. He pointed to growth on an unevenly eroded bank beside the Culkin Volunteer Fire Department off Culkin Road in northeast Warren County as an example.

“If you mow, the mower will take away all the grass,” he said.

The amount the county saves in mowing costs is probably about equal to the amount it pays for its spraying contract, which has a base amount this year of $102,900, Winans said. The spraying contract also has provisions for additions and last year about $18,000 in additions were necessary, he added.

In today’s dollars the county probably saves about $157,000 to $173,000 in operating costs for mowing. Before the spraying was begun the county mowed with about 10 tractors at an annual operating cost of what in today’s dollars would be about $215,000, said Winans. Now, the county uses three tractors for mowing, needs to mow less often and spends between about $42,000 and $58,000 in operating costs for mowing.

The operating costs don’t include the costs of new tractor-mower combinations, which can run about $60,000 to $75,000 each, or the cost of maintaining those mowers, Winans said. They do, however, include the cost of replacement blades for the mowers, one of the largest expenses in operating a mower, he added.

And the county needs fewer people to mow, freeing those people for other work, either on the control of trees and other brush or elsewhere in the road department, Winans noted.

“We get fewer night calls and less storm damage,” he said of the maintenance of trees now.

Entergy maintains the growth of trees in the rights of way of its power lines so the shift in county resources could not have affected the risk of power outages, said the customer-service manager for the electric utility’s Vicksburg district, Don Arnold.

Meanwhile no county employee has lost his job because of the reduction in the need for mowing; in fact, the county’s road department has continued to grow, Winans said.

The City of Vicksburg also has a smaller spraying program, but it is much smaller because about 95 percent of city rights of way are maintained by property owners, Winans said.

Since spraying reduces the amount of mowing needed it also reduces the risks of accidents, including those affecting motorists, their vehicles and county personnel, proponents of it point out. Such accidents can result in injuries to motorists or employees and can lead to legal claims such as those for workers’ compensation, Winans said.

The spraying program started with “test patterns” for its first couple of years, Winans said. By now most of the bugs have been worked out, he added.

Wallace said he also objects to other aspects of the spraying program, including what he called inefficiency in the use of county tax dollars.

“They want grass for erosion control, but most of (Campbell Swamp Road) is through a forest where there is no erosion happening anyway,” he said. “You’re not going to get grass. There’s not enough light with the trees, there’s so much overcanopy. It isn’t appropriate.”

The large proportion of shady areas along county roads does mean the spread of Bermudagrass will take longer where it is possible, Winans said.

Smalling responded, however, that Bermudagrass has been able to spread in some shady areas where it was not growing when the spraying program was begun. That herbicides have been sprayed in those areas may have made such spread possible by preventing the growth of any weeds that may have sprouted there instead.

Trees will also sprout in such shady areas and the larger they grow the more they add to the county’s responsibility for maintaining or removing them, Smalling said.

Winans said the county has used seed and sod to plant Bermudagrass in some areas but “can’t afford to sod and seed everything we do.”

“It’s a slow program,” Winans said of the promotion of Bermudagrass growth through herbicide spraying. “It doesn’t happen overnight.”