Sign Up for Phragmites Control Services

Between August 15th and October 31st. A member of the LPPAA will contact you approximately a week in advance of control work to ensure you are well informed.

Once we evaluate your property we will determine what equipment is needed. Most control work can be done with a sprayer mounted to a 4×4 truck or ATV, or by backpack sprayer. In exceptional circumstances, a Marsh Master may be required.

Since the most effective and efficient method of eradicating Phragmites involves the use of a herbicide, the free control services will use herbicides with the active ingredient glyphosate or imazapyr.

We use two herbicides for treatment:

For dry sites – Roundup WeatherPRO is used. This is a herbicide used regularly by the agricultural community.

For wet sites – Roundup Custom is used. We have a special permit to use this in the Long Point region. “Custom” is essentially the same as WeatherPRO except that all the pre-added surfactants (that make the product stick to the plant) are removed. The surfactants are the portion of the product that can be harmful to aquatic life. We use a water safe surfactant approved for aquatic use that is added to Roundup Custom at the time of application to ensure our treatment is effective.

Habitat Aqua, an imazapyr-based herbicide, has recently been registered for control of invasive Phragmites in Canada in and around aquatic sites. The LPPAA is currently investigating the use of this product as part of our control program.

Roundup (active ingredient glyphosate) has been used for many years and has many scientific studies that indicate it does not harm human health in small concentrations and when applied properly. It is important with any herbicide to ensure that all application guidelines are followed to ensure safe use of the product. We hire licensed contractors who are trained for the applications we are conducting.

We are also required to conduct strict monitoring of our aquatic applications as part of our special permit for Roundup Custom. To date all our monitoring and studies have indicated that glyphosate does not linger in the environment beyond 24 hours after application and is not causing any harm.

It is important that you know there are herbicide-free options that can be conducted outside this program, however, these services will not be free of charge and they require successive, labour-intensive manual actions annually to effectively treat Phragmites over a multi-year period. Herbicide is usually successful after one or two treatments.

Phragmites is usually controlled with 1-2 applications. Monitoring to determine if re-growth is present will be required for the first couple of years.

If Phragmites is located on your property, we will add these locations to a confidential map. As part of the mapping process, certain characteristics such as size of the Phragmites patch and proximity to surface water, will be collected. This information will be used to inform a control program. It is important to note that only information required for controlling Phragmites will be collected about your property as part of this process. Your privacy is of the utmost importance to us.

We greatly appreciate your support in making Norfolk Phragmites-free. Please remember you can withdraw from the program at any time, but your voluntary participation will help keep our environment healthy, our roadways safe and our drainage systems functioning well.

For more information please contact us