Anderson County Noxious Weed Director Vernon Yoder is retiring at the end of the year and county commissioners are worried about finding a replacement. Yoder serves as the county’s monitor for noxious weed growth along county roadways and also assists private landowners and others by consulting on their own efforts to halt the spread of invasive species.
Yoder’s post requires extensive training and certification in chemicals and applications with updates required periodically as chemicals used for eradication of weeds change and improve. The board believes finding someone with that knowledge base is going to be hard if not impossible. Yoder says when he was hired, he was told all he had to do was spray ditches…not even close.
Commissioners say they may find someone to shadow Yoder and let him train them, however, certification tests for the state-sanctioned director positions come around only once a year and require substantial study over all aspects of monitoring and treatment of the noxious species. Kansas has a law mandating the control of those weeds though it doesn’t require a paid director be hired in each county.
