Westmoreland Heritage Trail officials will delay applying herbicide to the woods along the trail until after a festival this weekend.
“We posted signs last Friday to perhaps do the spraying this week,” said trail president Stan Rudge. “But our maintenance chairman had forgotten about the Trail Towns Festival happening, so we’re going to postpone it until afterward.”
Trail officials typically apply herbicide once a year in the spring to help control weed growth.
“We just can’t keep up with them if we don’t,” Rudge said.
Signage identified the herbicide as glyphosate, the active chemical in common herbicides like Round-Up. Widely used by farmers, it was classified in 2015 as a probable human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Although it has been banned in several U.S. cities, both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Food Safety Administration permit its use and do not consider it a probable carcinogen.
“This is no different than what we’ve done any other year,” Rudge said.
Trail maintenance volunteers are trained through Westmoreland County on how to properly apply herbicide.
“They go to a class every year, and they get certified to do it,” Rudge said. “And we don’t spray the trail. We’re spraying the sides, about 10 to 15 inches from the edge. So within about a half-hour, the herbicide is dry, and once it’s dry it goes to work on the weeds.”
Rudge and his wife, Vicki, said they could use additional volunteers, not just for things such as herbicide application, but year-round trail maintenance.
“We have 370 members who pay dues, but that only includes about 20 or 30 who do a lot of the volunteer work along the trail,” Rudge said.
“A lot of people want to complain, but people don’t want to step up to help,” Vicki Rudge said. “The public largely has no idea how much time goes into maintaining the trail.”
Rudge said anyone interested in volunteering to help with trail maintenance can do so by visiting WestmorelandHeritageTrail.com.
The Trail Towns Festival will take place throughout the day Saturday at three locations along the trail.
Herbicide application is set to begin next week.
