Grass and weed killer

Has anyone had any issues with neighbors that spray herbicides that affect your trees, flowers, or lawn? I know that stuff drifts, as I can smell it in my yard. I use only organic things in my yard. My neighbors sprays the chain link fence which is one the property line, now my bushes near the fence look sickly. Neighbor is not friendly, so no asking him to stop. Anyone ever run into this situation??

A few years ago the people who farm the acreage across from my home (land surrounded on all sides by houses/subdivisions) decided it’d be a good idea to spray herbicide on a breezy day.

The drift damaged several shrubs and killed a young birch tree in my yard. I took pictures to document the damage and reported the situation to my state agriculture dept. which sent an agent out to take samples, confirming the spray drift and earning them a warning advisory. I could’ve used that to take them to court, but figured it wasn’t worth the time and trouble.

There may be laws governing herbicide spraying and spray drift for homeowners in your area. Document damage and talk to your neighbor would be my advice, then if they ignore the problem you’re left with getting a lawyer to write a letter to them (a cheapish option which might scare them straight) and following up as necessary.

It sucks, but people can be very stupid about using these chemicals.

Years ago, a city guy bought the land next to my mothers farm. He wanted to convert a small area (3-5 acres) that had previously been a pigpen into lawn. Over the years, the pigs had killed off everything growing there except some very hardy weeds, which were going to be difficult to eradicate. This new owner thought he could do that the easy way, by spraying herbicide (glycophospate, ‘Round-Up’). And even lazier, instead of spraying the area, he would hire a crop-dusting pilot to spray it from the air.

This is quite illegal, for obvious reasons, and the first few pilots he asked turned him down flat. But he eventually found some ner-do-well to do it. He did it badly, not waiting for a calm day, and not having a clear idea of where the land boundaries were (or maybe just not skilled enough to stay within them). Quite a bit drifted onto mothers land, and onto the neighbor to the west.

And that new landowner got caught! Someone from the state Pollution Control Agency came out, and took soil samples from all around the area. But just looking at an overhead photo of the fields was enough – the area of stunted crops was quite evident. (Rumor was that the PCA had been tipped off by one of the pilots who had refused to do this illegal spraying.)

So the PCA ordered him to settle with the affected neighbors, he had to get signed statements from them saying that he had reimbursed them for the damages. For Mom, we compared the yield from that area to the yield from the previous year, and he paid her for the decrease. Probably something similar for the other neighbor.

After all that, the PCA then hit him with several charges: illegal aerial spraying, use of a prohibited herbicide, application by a non-licensed individual, etc. and assessed a very hefty fine. Surprised him; he had expected that covering his neighbors damages would end the matter. And the signed statements, plus payment of damages, made it almost impossible to have then fought this in court.

But he did get a very nice lawn out of it – just a very expensive one.
And he still got off cheaply – had Mom realized that this had killed off her patch of wild asparagus growing along her fence, he would have paid a whole lot more damages!