Communities bug out over cuts to mosquito control

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Communities bug out over cuts to mosquito control

Story Created: Jul 4, 2009 at 11:04 AM CST

Story Updated: Jul 4, 2009 at 11:04 AM CST

Undated (AP) - Millions of mosquito eggs laid across southern Texas after Hurricane Ike hit the coast last summer are waiting for the little bit of rain and hot summer days they need to hatch. That's got the man whose job it is to fight the bugs worried — he's already running out of money.

Lee Chastant and fellow bug battlers across the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, up the East Coast in Connecticut and on the Great Plains of South Dakota are predicting a bumper crop of the always annoying and sometimes deadly pests. And even in places where dwindling tax revenues haven't forced mosquito control budget cuts, they're concerned about keeping up with the summer swarm.

The millions of dollars spent on insecticide nationwide to kill mosquito eggs and adults, as well as traps to monitor and test populations, isn't an exercise in keeping picnics and pool parties safe from itchy bug bites. West Nile virus, which is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes, infected more than 1,300 and killed 44 people last year. Already, the virus already has sickened people in South Dakota and Colorado this year.

Keith Wardlaw, president of the West Central Mosquito and Vector Control Association, said he's hearing about funding cuts across the association's eight-state region of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. The program he oversees in Laramie, Wyo., had its budget cut by 10 percent. When budget cuts happen, people running mosquito control programs have few choices: Cut back on the chemicals needed to tame the bugs or the number of people who go out to spray them. Either choice raises fears of bigger bug populations.

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