This time of year, when the grass is green all over, it's easy to notice something I'd overlooked since moving to Sonoma County last summer. The one place the grass isn't green is in a narrow strip a foot or so wide at the very edge of the highway. A telltale sign of recent herbicide application.
Honestly I was a bit shocked the first time I noticed this a couple weeks ago. Long ago I took the practice of roadside spraying in stride, but Humboldt County got wise and banned it many years ago, replacing it with manual vegetation management -- a bit more costly up-front, but with fewer harmful environmental consequences. A little searching online shows me that several other northern California counties have also gotten Cal Trans to drop roadside spraying. Given its environmentally conscious populace, I'm surprised to see Sonoma County is still poisoning its roadside vegetation.
