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Selective Herbicides Key to IVM Success
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Ask how much of Georgia Transmission Corporation’s (GTC’s) total right-of-way (ROW) acreage is maintained by staff using an Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) program, and Jeff Morgan, forester and ROW specialist, will give you a quick, easy answer.
“One hundred percent,” he says. “We operate about 5,500 miles of transmission line, so that’s about 60,000 acres of right-of-way. And we don’t mow any of it.”
It’s an impressive feat for a utility operating in a state known for woody vines like wisteria and Virginia creeper and fast-growing trees like ash, pines, river birch and sweetgum. But it wasn’t by accident; Morgan and Lindsey Harrell, forester and ROW specialist, made a deliberate choice to switch up GTC’s VM practices by adopting a selective herbicide program.
“In 2018, we changed our herbicide mix,” Harrell says. “Then around 2020, we stopped mowing altogether.”
So far, GTC hasn’t missed mowing at all. Overall VM expenses are down, stem counts are down, customer complaints are down and labor utilization has improved.
“Mowing does have benefits,” Morgan says. “But for us, the downsides outweigh those benefits. For one, mowing exposes more of the soil to sunlight, and that activates the seedbed. For another, you can get ‘scalping’ after mowing, which not only exposes the soil to sunlight but also looks bad. Plus, mowing can cost us anywhere from $100 to $150 per acre, while the herbicide applications cost us $70 to $80 per acre.”
But the lower expenses don’t just come in the form of reduced Vegetation Management costs.
“It also reduces the cost of line maintenance,” Morgan says. “If we didn’t maintain our rights-of-way like we do, our line crews would have to bring their own mowers to a site to clear it before they could do their maintenance work. And with cleaner rights-of-way, your restoration time in the event of an outage can be dramatically reduced as well. You can get in faster, make the repairs and get power back to your customers faster.”
Selectivity Is Key
Morgan and Harrell rely on products such as TerraVue® herbicide and Vastlan® herbicide to control unwanted brush and trees without taking out all the vegetation.
“We’re trying to control 100% of woody stems,” Harrell says. “That mix gives us good control of woody stems, and it doesn’t hurt the grasses.”
The selective action of these products has allowed GTC to move away from products like glyphosate while enabling control of invasive and incompatible species.
“We’ve completely removed glyphosate from our mix,” Morgan says. “That’s been huge for our shareholders and for the property owners along our rights-of-way, since that one product generated a lot of complaints. So, with fewer nontarget species affected we’ve reduced those complaints quite a bit, and we’ve improved the look of our rights-of-way.”
The ‘Heart’ of IVM
Morgan and Harrell mention that while utilities and contractors adopting a similar program might see higher initial costs, those costs go down over time, which contributes to the long-term savings.
“When you promote those grasses, that’ll help keep woody stems from becoming established on a right-of-way,” Harrell says. “That’s really the heart of an IVM program — by reducing stem counts, we’re reducing the number of trees that regenerate on the rights-of-way, and we’re using less herbicide long-term.”
“The first year or two after you start a program like this you might see higher stem counts, just from having more sunlight hit the soil,” Morgan says. “But once the grasses are established, the stem counts keep going down. After six years or so, you’re just dealing with incidental seeding and regeneration in the rights-of-way.”
Both Morgan and Harrell credit GTC management and executive leadership with giving them the decision-making latitude and the financial resources to develop and deploy the program.
“Our management knows IVM,” Morgan says, “and they know forestry. They understand that we’re the subject matter experts, so they left the decisions to us — and it’s definitely paid off.”
Under normal field conditions, TerraVue® is nonvolatile. TerraVue has no grazing or haying restrictions for any class of livestock, including lactating dairy cows, horses (including lactating mares) and meat animals prior to slaughter. Label precautions apply to forage treated with TerraVue and to manure and urine from animals that have consumed treated forage. TerraVue and Vastlan® are not registered for sale or use in all states. Contact your state pesticide regulatory agency to determine if a product is registered for sale or use in your state. Consult the label for full details. Always read and follow label directions.
Vistas®
For over 30 years, Vistas® has covered strategies, trends and stories from across the Vegetation Management industry.