City to Apply Herbicide to Harbon Park

The City of Laramie Parks and Recreation Department has planned an application of herbicide for Laramie’s only chemical free park.

The city will apply Speedzone herbicide to Harbon Park on June 20^th. Keith Wardlaw, city mosquito control supervisor, said when the park was established as chemical-free the stipulation was that it would only be so long as the city could maintain it.

“Over the last four or five years we have had a significant infestation of broad-leaf weeds, dandelions being the main one,” Wardlaw said. “Since we are not using herbicide to control those weeds they continually go to seed and right now we have a really serious dandelion problem.”

Wardlaw said the dandelion infestation will seriously affect the maintainability and vigor of the turf in the park as well as causing harm to land owners in surrounding areas.

“The only way we can adequately control this at this point is to go in with a herbicide,” Wardlaw said. “We’ll go back into the non-herbicide, non-pesticide application once we get this controlled.”

The City will post signs at the park to alert citizens of the application three days in advance and they will remain in place for a week.