Athletic-Field Disaster — It’s All About Prevention

We’ve all heard it: “Lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part.” But — but — sometimes it creates an incredible mess.

Two basic steps in Integrated Pest Management — planning and communication —avoid a number of problems. Recently an upstate NY school rented its space to an outside agency — a practice that’s becoming more common in these tough economic times. And what could be more important than preventing the mistakes that cause really expensive problems from happening?

This damage wasn’t caused by insects, diseases, or weeds. But it’s still relevant to a thorough IPM Plan. Any turfgrass manager will confirm — often the most damaging pests are people.
This damage wasn’t caused by insects, diseases, or weeds. But it’s still relevant to a thorough IPM Plan. Any turfgrass manager will confirm — often the most damaging pests are people.

Prevention — it’s core to good IPM. Because clear communication and good planning could have prevented this athletic-field disaster.

In a nutshell, the school was told 1,000 people would be coming to the school for exams. They assumed this meant that 500 would arrive in the morning and 500 in the afternoon — and knew the parking lot could accommodate that number of cars. When 1,000 people showed up for the morning exam someone started directing cars onto athletic fields just thawing from the frozen winter. The result?

“Four acres of mud and ruts,” the local paper said.

Author: Joellen Lampman, NYS IPM