Feds to eradicate weeds in Tonto Nat’l Forest

KELLNER CANYON — The worst year was 1969. The low flying U.S. Forest Service helicopters came more often that year, spraying with less accuracy than previous years. The pungent mist landed on homes, livestock and, on occasions, people.

On a hot August day that year, Bob McKusick was hiking with his wife, three children and two dogs They were exploring a clay deposit the family had recently acquired from the U.S. Forest Service near their home in Kellner Canyon in the Pinal Mountains just north of Globe

That’s when they heard the wahump of an approaching helicopter.

“We tried to wave them off,” McKusick says. “We were in full view.” They were sprayed away. Within days one of the dogs died, bleeding from “every orifice.”

In the coming years, the McKusicks and their neighbors would see birth defects, escalating cancer rates, deformed livestock and too many early deaths. The water supply was contaminated forcing residents to have their water trucked in from Globe for the next 35 years.

“We went through absolute hell,” says McKusick, now 77.

McKusick and his neighbors would soon discover the Forest Service had been dropping clouds of Silvex, a mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D on them. In Vietnam, the same stuff was called Agent Orange.

Now, the U.S. Forest Service once again wants to kill vegetation. Noxious weeds are pushing out competing native plants, running the ecosystem and creating a wildfire hazard. But this time, the agency is using herbicides at very low toxicity levels, as well as other techniques, to keep weeds from spreading across the Tonto National Forest through central Arizona and beyond.

The forest is the largest national forest area in the state at 2.9 million acres.

In June, the Forest Service released a proposed 10-year plan to eradicate 64 species of noxious weeds over the Tonto’s vast expanse. The agency’s preferred alternative would use a combination of mechanical, manual and biological controls as well as 13 herbicides. Similar plans have been used effectively and safely, officials say, on national forests in Arizona and throughout the West.

Not surprisingly, some Kellner Canyon residents like McKusick don’t like the idea.

It’s not hard to understand McKusick’s anger. In the late 1960s, the Salt River Project contracted with the Forest Service to spray a 1,900-acre chunk of the north slopes of the Pinal Mountains with defoliants in an effort to kill off water sucking shrubs and allow less thirsty grasses to take over. The grasses would mean better cattle grazing and more water flowing down the slopes and eventually into the Salt River for Phoenicians to drink and water their lawns with.

But the plan went wrong on many levels.

Diesel fuel was supposed to be mixed with the chemicals to avoid drift. According to Forest Service guidelines at the time, spraying was only supposed to occur when wind speeds were below 10 mph. On a handful of occasions in 1969, the chemicals were mixed with water and household detergent instead of diesel and helicopters sprayed on gusty days.

In early 1970, Time magazine ran an article that looked into the spiking cancer rates and tales of bizarrely deformed livestock coming out of Kellner, Ice House and Sixshooter canyons. When local physicians and veterinarians said they weren’t seeing anything usual, the article suggested residents were paranoid.

The McKusicks and four other families eventually sued Dow Chemical, the maker of Silvex, and the U.S. Forest Service, which the agency no longer uses because it is banned. The families ended up settling out of court in 1980.

“It wasn’t settled for millions and millions like they are nowadays, like it should have been,” McKusick says.

The Forest Service says everything will be different this time. Much has changed in 40 years. Thanks to passage of the National Environmental Policy Act, ironically passed by Congress in 1969, the federal government is now required to consider the environmental implications of any major plan and gather public comment.

Patti Fenner, noxious weeds coordinator for the Tonto National Forest, says past technology was not available to determine what levels of dioxin were safe. Regardless, she adds, her agency will only be doing ground-level spraying this time without helicopters or dioxin — a contaminant in herbicides that has also been banned.

“We made mistakes,” Fenner says, “There is no doubt. Trying to kill off an area’s vegetation is just stupid.”

Now the agency only wants to use methods that cause the least environmental impact to help save the West’s landscape. In an email to TZR, Fenner said buffel grass is taking over the Southwest’s Sonoran deserts, leading to less cacti and more intense wildfires. The thorny Yellow starthistle, she said, threatens to make certain lands unpassable by horse because it’s a toxic plant with one-inch-long spines. The plant is exploding in population in California and now Arizona, she said.

Fenner is particularly concerned with weeds like camelthorn, which is native to Central Asia. It’s a particularly tough plant that can grow through pavement and concrete. “You can’t get rid of this plant any other way,” except with herbicides, Fenner says.

Other weeds can be killed off with controlled burning and pulling by hand and other methods.

Still, such assurances aren’t good enough for McKusick or his son-in-law. Geof Condit, who also lives in Kellner Canyon, says nine of the 13 chemicals the Forest Service plans on using are toxic, according to the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides.

“They make it sound all wonderful,” Condit says of the Forest Service plans.

Fenner doesn’t expect a final decision to be made until sometime next year. Even if the Forest Service decides to go ahead with its plan to use herbicides, federal officials may still avoid an ugly confrontation with Kellner Canyon residents. Fenner says very few invasive weeds have been found in the Pinals, which means little, if any, spraying may be needed – at least for now.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.