Troubling Tumbleweeds : Controlled Burns Planned to Rid Antelope Valley of Thistles

Faced with a tumbleweed problem so severe in parts of the Antelope Valley that some houses have nearly been buried, Los Angeles County officials are preparing to launch an unprecedented assault on the wayward weeds.

And property owners in the high desert will foot the bill. At the urging of Supervisor Mike Antonovich, the county agricultural commissioner’s office is proposing to burn the tumbleweeds on up to 2,700 acres of vacant and mostly privately owned land in and around Lancaster and Palmdale, charging landowners $100 to $150 an acre for the service.

After the controlled burns, the county plans to replant the area with desert grasses, which officials say will control the growth of tumbleweeds and reduce serious problems with windblown dirt and sand in the arid region.

After a severe windstorm in August, dozens of Antelope Valley homes were inundated with tumbleweeds--some as large as several feet in diameter--literally trapping residents in their houses.

The county’s plan already has opponents, including the Los Angeles City Department of Airports, which owns nearly 700 acres of the land in the targeted area. Although tumbleweeds are a nuisance, airport and other officials fear that the controlled burns could cause soil erosion, which would be worse.

“We don’t think the Antelope Valley should be turned into a dust bowl just to fight tumbleweeds. I think there’s been an overreaction here on their part,” said Jim Bort, a top Airports Department official in Palmdale. The city owns about 17,500 acres of land planned for a future airport.

Although the city could pay as much as $100,000 for weed clearance, Bort said the expense was not the reason for the city’s objections. Instead, he said, airport officials want to fence the land they own, collect the weeds and dispose of them as they gather.

The city and other property owners could remove the tumbleweeds themselves, but if that does not solve the problem the owners could be cited by the county.

Officials would prefer that county crews do the work to ensure that burned areas are replanted, something that private landowners could not be required to do.

Officials say the high desert has the county’s worst problem with tumbleweeds, which typically dry out, break loose and begin rolling during the hot and often windy summer. Contrary to popular belief, tumbleweeds are not native to the desert. The seeds came from Europe and Asia in grain shipments about 100 years ago.

After the plan was given preliminary approval by the Board of Supervisors last month, the owners of 424 parcels of land in the Antelope Valley, including the city’s Airports Department, were sent notices describing the tumbleweeds as a nuisance and a potential fire hazard.

Cato Fiksdal, the deputy director of the county agricultural commissioner’s weed hazard and pest abatement bureau, said the supervisors are scheduled to confirm their decision next Thursday. The county could begin the work as early as December, he said.

The county also is holding a public meeting on the proposal today at 3:30 p.m. at the county library at 1150 W. Ave. J in Lancaster.

The county routinely requires brush and weed clearance around structures. But Fiksdal said the Antelope Valley proposal is unique because it is the first time that the county has targeted the fields where the weeds grow, instead of the neighborhoods where they get blown.

The proposal raised some concerns about air pollution in the high desert. But Air Quality Management District officials say their rules specifically allow tumbleweed burning. Fiksdal added that county fire officials, who would conduct the burns, are satisfied with the safety of the proposal.