Usually the best control for aquatic weeds is a natural predator, hopefully an edible fish, but everyone (including me!) is understandably shy about introducing more non-native species… cane toads and rabbits in Australia always come to mind…
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My partner does invasive plant control on a volunteer basis from time to time and she says that using herbicide on invasives is pretty common (cost-benefit wise) but that they avoid doing it within 20 metres of streams, which drastically limits its usefulness. Giant Hogweed and Japanese Knotweed really like streams.
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Also, from Wikipedia:
The 1971 album Nursery Cryme by the progressive rock group Genesis contains a song called “The Return of the Giant Hogweed”. The lyrics describe a murderous attack on the human race by Heracleum mantegazzianum, long after the plant was first “captured” and brought to England by a Victorian explorer.
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'Tis true, as a stream-dweller I can confirm. Also japanese hops, mile-a-minute vine, porcelainberry, russian olive, and oriental bittersweet…
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Beat me to it!! Thank you 
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I can’t remember the name of the weed, I can ask if you want. The problem is, being not native, nothing eats it. Which, as you point out, one might find something that does, but then that too would be non-native and then you end up with mutant Piranha that eat people.
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Much better than the alternative: WeedHog! Nobody wants them around.
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I wonder if I can get a syringe and deliver the salt that way. The bindweed is only in a few places, trying to wrap around my flowers. It’s easier to remove when it is less elastic.
The thought of a flamethrower just reminds of that ST:Voyager episode when Kes killed the plants. The grapevine has become a nuisance, because it keeps trying to grow on my trees, telephone poles, fence, etc. I have been tempted to go “full Ripley” on it, because sometimes it seems like an alien menace that is reproducing at an alarming rate.
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Whitewater State Park in southern Minnesota (and several other state parks) have permanent signs up on hiking trails cautioning people about the phototoxicity of “Wild Parsnip”, accompanied by pictures that look exactly like this plant. And what do you think is growing right beside the signs? Yep. They have already arrived in numbers too big to eradicate.
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You probably want to pull the grapevine down. We had some bird-seeded vines climbing local scrub brush, which then made the three foot stretch up into the canopy of a nice oak tree behind our place. After about a year it had choked out the tree completely, leaving only a brittle stump covered in vines. I never suspected it would kill a mature tree so quickly.
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You mean like Snakeheads, right? We’ve already got those in North America at least, but they don’t belong here.
There was an urban legend in the 1980s that kids had got horrifically burned using giant hogweed stems as peashooters.
Himalayan Balsam is the invasive most commonly associated with streams over here.
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My skater friends used to refer to any notably burly, usually lopsided, thick joint or blunt that they rolled as a “hog leg.” Probably some of the native East Tennessee jargon that crept into the hip-speak. You gotta say “hawg laig,” though.
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We’ve got problems with the same plant here in Finland, too. It’s a real pain to get rid of.
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I could say we have a problem here in the UK too, or I could just point out that the article’s image is from my county. 
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I wonder if Giant Hogweed will take out kudzu?
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But what if they fight for a while and then realize they’re better off teaming up? Then what, smart guy?
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As in Lancashire, not Middlesex or Isle of Wight (both also UK counties and apparently Virginian ones too).
The increasing incidence of Autism is due to 2 factors: 1) the definition of Autism was dramatically widened in the last decades and 2) an increasing number of people are being diagnosed for Autism. Apart from that, the number of people who would be diagnosed with Autism according to current standards probably never changed.
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I did some work on giant hogweed control in the UK a few year ago. The leaves and stems, despite the toxins, are apparently quite nutritious and contain a lot of nitrogen. We were working on a trial using sheep to graze an area that was heavily infested, as sheep don’t seem to be particularly bothered by the toxins. It was pretty damn effective, and within a year or two the only hogweed left at the site was a bunch of very small seedlings.
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