BROOKINGS – Summers would be darn near perfect if it weren’t for those annoying mosquitoes that buzz in your ear and suck your blood whenever you venture outside.
That’s why the Brookings Street Department has trained mosquito vanquishers who are constantly on patrol for the invading insects.
Josh McClain is an advanced equipment operator with the Street Department who oversees the mosquito control program, said Matt Bartley, street superintendent. McClain and J.D. Kahler spend most of their summers fogging the town and checking mosquito traps to try to keep ahead of the little buggers.
It’s a time-intensive job that has gotten more and more involved and stretches to all hours, especially as they learn more about mosquitoes, Bartley said.
Breeding in water
One of the first important things to know is mosquitoes breed in water.
“Most of what Josh and J.D. are doing during the day is larva sighting, where they’re treating areas of water and that includes the whole town (and Six Mile Creek),” Bartley said.
“We live in a low-lying, high water table area, so there’s hundreds of pockets of water that we encounter all around the town ... that breed a significant amount of mosquitoes,” Bartley said.
Any water can be breeding ground for mosquitoes, not just lakes, rivers and swamps.
“Any areas that hold water whether it’s in ditches, all the way down to dog dishes in the backyards,” Bartley said.
They’ve found mosquito eggs in wheelbarrows, tires, pails, sandboxes, “anything that will hold water,” McClain said.
He showed a picture on his phone of a small dipper with a little water in the bottom – which was teeming with mosquito larvae.
“We advise that people can help us out and remove any standing water in their yards,” Bartley said.
Bartley and McClain said it takes seven to 10 days after a rain for a hatch to come out, depending on the weather.
“After every rainfall, there’s a hatch,” McClain said.
The goal is to keep as many mosquitoes from hatching, growing up and laying more babies as possible.
Trapping and tracking
To gather as much information about the mosquito population as they can, they have put out nine traps in various locations: the Brookings Police station, Sexauer Park, Pioneer Park, Arrowhead Park in Indians Hills, Valley View Park in the south end of town, Fishback Soccer Complex, EdgeBrook Golf Course, Larson Park and Hillcrest Park.
Many times, when they’re checking the traps, which look like a bag hanging from a tree, people come up and ask what they’re doing.
“We’ll get our mosquitoes and we’ll count ’em and we’ll turn ’em over to SDSU,” Bartley said.
Researchers at South Dakota State University test the mosquitoes to see if they are carrying diseases, like West Nile virus. Most people infected with WNV do not develop symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.
“About one out of 150 infected people develop a serious, sometimes fatal, illness,” according to cdc.gov.
Although July and August are the peak time for West Nile transmission, don’t let down your guard, said Bartley and McClain.
“The later months, your (total mosquito) counts will go down, but your percentage of West Nile within those counts will go up,” Bartley said, adding the culex tarsalis is the biggest West Nile mosquito for Brookings, and is “more prevalent in the later summer months, early fall.”
Fogging
Another purpose for the traps is to “help us determine when we’re gonna fog,” Bartley said.
They fog from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. because the weather conditions are right and not as many people are out.
The fogging is done by a pick-up with an ultra-low volume fogger in the bed, McClain said. The driver can control whether it’s on or off, even the amount of chemical released, so if he sees someone coming out of the house or car, he can shut everything off. Once they’re inside, the driver keeps going.
There are two fog machines and one driver takes the north side and the other the south, going down streets, avenues, alleys and even bike trials to cover as much city property as they can, but they can’t cover private property. Some of the new neighborhoods are a problem because they have cul de sacs and do not have alleys.
“We do make an attempt to cover the town in one evening,” McClain said.
They try to fog later in the week so the events on the weekend are covered.
“Anything where there’s gonna be a lot of people,” McClain said. “Keep everybody having a good time and keep them safe.”
To that end, they’ve stepped up the checks on the traps.
“In previous years, we weren’t looking at the counts over the weekend,” Bartley said.
Now, McClain and Kahler check the traps on the weekends and look ahead at the predicted weather. If the weather doesn’t look like it will cooperate with a fogging later in the week, they’ll do it on Tuesday or Wednesday to knock down as many mosquitoes as they can, especially for those events, Bartley said.
Weather is a big factor on when they fog: they can’t go out in the rain, and they need some wind, but not too much.
“The wind is one of the biggest issues,” Bartley said. “If the wind is in that 5 to 10 mph range is about maximum for what we can go out and fog with, otherwise, it just blows away too quickly.”
No wind means it doesn’t disburse at all and doesn’t hit any mosquitoes. Wind direction also dictates who gets fogged.
“Some residents will say, one side of the street got it, the other (didn’t), and that’s just typically due to the wind drift,” Bartley said.
The misconception about fogging is it kills every mosquito.
“It’s not that you’re gonna walk outside and all of a sudden, there’s no mosquitoes,” Bartley said. “The fogging is primarily killing the mosquitoes that are airborne at that moment or possibly within a tree that (the fog drifts into).”
“It’s a contact kill, it has to hit the mosquito,” McClain said. “Once (the fog) hits the tree or lands on the car, or hits the ground, it’s done. That’s what makes it safe.”
Safe product
The chemical is Biomist 3+15, said Bartley. It’s an insecticide that has 3 percent permethrin and 15 percent piperonyl butoxide.
“On the data sheet, it’s absolutely labeled safe around humans and dogs,” McClain said. “I wouldn’t suggest running around and following it and making a career doing that, but absolutely, if there’s a brief (exposure), it’s a safe product.
“This is good stuff; I mean, it’s safe,” McClain said. “This is the top-of-the-line chemical, one of the tops, as far as we’re concerned, safety-wise and that’s why we use it. We’ve been using this stuff for a long time with zero complaints. It’s been a good product for us.”
It’s a little expensive, though.
“A barrel of that stuff’s about $5,500,” Bartley said. “Our annual budget is around $20,000 right now. It’s an account that does go into the red throughout these seasons.”
They were able to get a South Dakota mosquito grant application.
“This year, I believe we received $5,200,” Bartley said. “So that basically bought us another barrel of the Biomist.
“It’s a challenge that we work with to try to stay within those budget dollars, but provide the level of service that everybody’s requesting,” he said.
Season ending
With fall here, mosquito season is nearing its end.
“We’re right on course for what we’ve done the last couple years,” McClain said. “We fogged nine times this year, and I think we fogged 11 last year.”
These guys can’t rest until the mosquitoes are totally gone, but they need a little help from Mother Nature.
“You gotta have a pretty good frost for a little while to wipe them out. Soon as that happens, smiling faces everywhere,” said McClain, adding it takes about “a four-hour frost at night. Thirty-two (degrees F) for an hour is not gonna kill ’em, just in case people are wondering.”
Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.
