Orange County public works personnel are set to begin work next week on a pilot program of clearing vegetation from two channels in San Juan Capistrano without using herbicides or pesticides.<\/p>\n
The project drew praise Wednesday from Orange County Board of Supervisors Vice Chair Katrina Foley as a collaborative effort among public and private interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we did a good job collaborating with all of the stakeholders,\u201d Foley said in an interview with City News Service.<\/p>\n
Organizations including Surfrider and Coastkeeper offered input in the plan to avoid using the chemicals in the channel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to prepare for El Ni\u00c3\u00b1o, but we don\u2019t want to use pesticides or herbicides,\u201d Foley said. \u201cI do think it is my priority that we avoid using herbicides and pesticides wherever possible, and we should certainly do away with routine spraying and do more targeted applications. It\u2019s better for our health and the habitat and keeps our waterways clean.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orange County engineer Edward Frondoso said in a conference call with reporters this week that public works staffers will manually clear some of the thicker vegetation from the San Juan and Trabuco Creek channels in a project the Board of Supervisors approved June 9.<\/p>\n
\u201cTruly, the goal is to see if we can manage this channel effectively\u201d without the chemicals, Frondoso said. \u201cWe\u2019ll do everything we normally can\u2026 and we\u2019re going to keep track of how invasive species grow back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program will measure how effective it is to manually remove the vegetation and to see how much it will cost with labor and materials, Frondoso said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this will help us advise if it\u2019s something we can continue to do in the future and be expanded to other channels,\u201d Frondoso said.<\/p>\n
Hugo Pineda, the deputy director of operations and maintenance for the county\u2019s public works department, added, \u201cWe\u2019re focused on the removal of woody vegetation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the work will involve some electric and power tools as the brush is ripped out, Pineda said. The \u201clow-lying grass\u201d will be left alone, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this is being done in preparation for the storm season\u201d this winter, Pineda said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be at it for a couple of months.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear if the county will have to hire outside contractors to help out.<\/p>\n
The county is also eyeing a capital improvement project that will consider widening channels.<\/p>\n
Other jurisdictions have tried similar programs and concluded it was not practical, Frondoso said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019ll only find out by doing it ourselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County public works personnel are set to begin work next week on a pilot program of clearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,34732,186360,76594,166,186361,171,1968],"class_list":["post-473914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-begin","tag-channels","tag-cleaning","tag-county","tag-herbicides","tag-orange","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}