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On the other hand, it also can be argued that, in landscape maint- <br /> enance and roadside situations, an aesthetic/functional and economic <br /> threshold may well be one in the same. Appearance can be a product for <br /> which payment is made and may well affect the income of resorts, golf <br /> courses and other such enterprises. On roadsides, financial issues such as <br /> public investment and asset preservation come into play when necessary <br /> maintenance standards are compromised. <br /> But this debate is academic and unecessary. What is important is <br /> that thresholds are established and become the determining factor as to <br /> when and where vegetation or pest control treatments are made. <br /> Zachery Grant, writing for the EPA, put it this way: <br /> "To implement the IPM approach, [one] must be prepared to <br /> establish thresholds for unacceptable economic or aesthetic <br /> injury based on some reliable system of measurement. Before <br /> resorting to the use of any chemical pesticide, it should be <br /> established by actual monitoring...that injury thresholds -- or <br /> action levels related to such thresholds -- will be exceeded unless <br /> chemicals are used. Until these thresholds are crossed, use of <br /> alternative methods should be attempted as feasible (12] <br /> If pest populations rebuild to threshold levels again following <br /> treatment, further applications may be necessary. These could be a <br /> repetition of the previous control measure or a different strategy which <br /> subsequent evaluations have indicated will be more effective. <br /> 13 <br />