JOYCE — State transportation officials and a Clallam County environmental group are uniting for the first time to landscape an acre of bare hillside near a new state Highway 112 bridge.
The effort at Susie Creek is part of a growing trend to plant the state’s highways with native flora, which in the long term can choke out non-native noxious weeds and stem roadside weed control costs. Environmentalists support the program because it prevents state-sprayed pesticides from seeping into salmon-bearing streams and provides habitat and food for birds.
The Clallam County No Spray Coalition, which opposes the state’s use of toxic pesticides to control roadside weeds, will join Olympic Region state Department of Transportation officials at 9 a.m. March 20 at the bridge site to plant several hundred native plants.
Susie Creek is west of Joyce and the Lyre River.
“It’s our commitment to work with No Spray,” said Don Clotfelter, maintenance operations superintendent for the Port Angeles area.
The “planting party,” Clotfelter said, seeks volunteers to help place plants in holes. Those interested can contact Clotfelter at 360-457-2713.
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The rest of the story appears in the Thursday Peninsula Daily News.
