A Menace On Western—Tumbleweeds

It's a uniquely Western problem: For as long as there has been a frontier, the lowly tumbleweed has been its emblem. From A Fistful of Dollars to I-15, the vagabond brambles have been the itinerant dwellers of a desolate and inhospitable clime. 

That's exactly the sort of down-at-the-heels image the fair citizens of Cherryland have tried for years to sweep away. They banded together to rout drugs and hooligans, fight liquor and, with county help, organize annual clean-up days, install sidewalks and spiff up roads. 

Yet turn onto Western Boulevard and there they are, some as tall as a man and wide as a pickup, curled between curbs of immaculate new pavement: Tumbleweeds. Scores of them, as far as the eye can see.  

More than an eyesore, the weeds have proved a nuisance to drivers and a hazard to students, who pass through the Union Pacific railroad tracks on their way too and from Cherryland Elementary School. 

They've grown virtually untamed on Western along the train tracks that bisect the thoroughfare, protected by a tangle of bureaucracy as prickly as the plants themselves. 

"We’ve offered to go over there and clean it up on the clean-up days, but they won’t let us," said longtime Cherryland Elementary School Librarian Linda Salazar. "If we clean up the rest of the neighbourhood, what good does it do if that part's not getting cleaned up?"

Authority over the railway is knotty. Though the county manages land up to and including the curbs that bank the tracks on either side, the trackbed and the rails belong to Union Pacific Railroad. 

"They're a community problem and they don't care, so it's frustrating," said resident Mike Baratta, who's long waged a one-man war on the weeds.

Baratta's no sheriff with a silver star gleaming on his chest. He hasn't got a ten-gallon hat or a taciturn Navaho sidekick, and as far as anybody in Cherryland knows, he's never killed a man at 10 paces.

What he has, more or less, is a telephone. When that fails, he breaks out his pitchfork, clearing the behemoth brambles once they inevitably dry up and tumble into the street and the nearby schoolyard.

"They’re not heavy, but you can’t really get your arms around them, and they’re very poky," Baratta said. "They’re a mess."

Still, he doesn't dare venture onto the tracks where the tumbleweeds grow. 

"Nobody is supposed to go on that property and do anything, according to Union Pacific," he said. "People have called and complained about the weeds and whatnot, and it just goes to an answering machine in Omaha."

As any community activist knows, it can be tricky finding the right agency to nag about an eyesore or a hazard. Baratta and others tried Code Enforcement and Public Works, Redevelopment, the transportation agencies and the District Supervisor — all to no avail.

The county fares little better. Employees at two agencies said their primary contact at Union Pacific was an email address that gives curt answers when it gets answers at all. 

Meanwhile, none of the agencies have been allowed to so much as set foot on the property, which belongs to the railway.

"The county doesn't have jurisdiction over the Union Pacific right-of-way," said Seth Kaplan, chief of staff for District 4 Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley.

According to Salazar, the railroad stopped running trains through Cherryland about a decade ago. Since then, maintenance has fallen by the wayside, and county workers have been cited for trying to do it themselves. 

Any brush clearing appears ad hoc, undertaken by residents sick of waiting.

"I don’t know if people go out and do it on their own and just don’t say anything, because they just get fed up with it," Salazar said. 

Just how often Union Pacific clears the patch of railroad could not be confirmed. The railway did not return requests for comment on this story, either from Patch or the Alameda County Department of Public Works. 

For now, it's up to Baratta and his pitchfork.