As a private landowner of 156 acres of field and forest in Greene County, I want to associate myself with the comments of Roderick Walker, also posted to this Town Hall.  I acknowledge that the Noxious Weed Law which is the subject of this regulatory process, and which only targets plant species that are "not widely disseminated", is inadequate to address the regulation in the commercial trade of the vast majority of invasive exotic plants on DCR-DNH's invasive plant list, which have already escaped into natural areas and are already widely disseminated.  The Noxious Weed Law needs to be changed, or some new law created, so that these plants eventually are no longer bought and sold in the trade, which only further compounds a multi-million dollar problem already present in Virginia.

This year we will spend thousands and thousands of dollars, our own, and State and Federal program funds, to control invasive exotic plants on our land that are still being sold in the commercial trade in Virginia.  Does the continued sale of these noxious weeds make sense, for the taxpayers of Virginia, or for the health of our natural areas?