By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

AUBURN – The sight of men in chemical suits spraying the bushes behind his garden Monday morning set off Kenneth Cox.

He marched right up to the crew hired by Central Maine Power Co. to spray the herbicide Accord in the right of way around its Hotel Road substation.

He wanted to know what was going on.

“People are out there all the time, kids playing, people picking berries,” Cox said.

A CMP spokeswoman said Cox could rest assured that the berries are safe.

“We want the shrubs and the berries to stay there,” said Gail Rice. That’s why crews use Accord, which can be sprayed on specific, individual plants.

The crew was being selective, she said, spraying only individual plants right next to Cox’s property, which abuts the substation.

It’s part of CMP’s massive vegetation-management program. The company treats about 8,000 acres of right-of-way land around Maine every year to keep nuisance plants, such as poplar trees, from interfering with power lines.

The spray crews are supposed to be careful, treating and killing individual saplings before they become a nuisance.

“Anyone that’s ever tried to get rid of a poplar in their backyard knows how hard that can be,” Rice said. “If you cut them, they just come back stronger.”

Accord works because it can be sprayed on saplings, leaving neighboring vegetation untouched. The berry bushes and shrubs at the Hotel Road substation weren’t even sprayed, Rice said.

“The shrubs make the area more visually appealing and form a barrier, keeping nuisance vegetation from growing up,” she said. “We don’t want anything to happen to that vegetation.”

Jon Hinck, toxics project director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said he appreciated CMP’s sentiment.

“But they’re working according to best-case scenarios, assuming the person doing the job is well-trained and is targeting and spraying the right plants,” Hinck said. “Unfortunately, real-world examples don’t always match the best cases.”

Wind can cause the spray to drift, hurting the shrubs that CMP wants to protect. Neighboring yards can be ruined, too, he said. He’d rather see CMP use the manual approach – cutting or pulling up offending plants.

“Relying on toxic chemicals to do a job can have unintended consequences,” Hinck said. “I just think it would be better to rely on manual controls for something like that.”

Cox felt better after state and local health officials told him that Accord, more commonly known to homeowners as RoundUp or Rodeo, was nothing to worry about.

But he was still upset that he and his neighbors weren’t warned about the spraying and that no signs were posted afterward.

“I worry because my grandkids are over here, all the time,” Cox said. “The people down the street, they have two little boys and they’re always out there playing. And if I didn’t see them this morning, nobody would know they’d even been there.”

Cox also worries about the blackberries at the back of his garden. They’ve spread beyond his property, turning the area around the substation into a haven for berry pickers.

“They’d better wash them pretty carefully now,” he said.

As far as telling neighbors, Rice said the company does warn them – in a general way. The company includes a notice in the March bill mailing to all of its customers, warning that the company will be spraying in the coming months. It also encourages people living alongside CMP rights of way to call the company.

Cox said he doesn’t recall getting a notice.

“If it did come, I probably thought it was just advertising,” he said. “I don’t read that stuff.”

About Accord herbicide

The active ingredient in Accord and similar products such as RoundUp, Tumbleweed and Touchdown Rodeo, is glyphosate. It kills all plants but is considered nontoxic to humans and animals in low doses. Additives to the weed killer can be toxic to some kinds of fish, birds, insects and earthworms.

Manufacturers urge people who get the chemical in their eyes to flush them with water and people who get it on their skin to wash. Manufacturers say there is no treatment necessary if the chemical is ingested. They urge people who breathe the spray to get fresh air.

– Sources: Dow AgroSciences LLC, U.S. Department of Agriculture