County Putting Bite on Holdout Cities to Share Cost of Mosquito Battle

The county’s unheralded mosquito abatement districts have inspired quips about “swat” teams and bug wars. They rely upon something called “sentinel chicken flocks” to detect disease-carrying mosquitoes, and they employ gluttonous 2 1/2-inch-long minnows to gobble up mosquito larvae in people’s fish ponds.

But the districts wage a somber and expensive battle against virus-carrying mosquitoes that can kill humans, and county officials made it clear Tuesday that cities who have never joined a mosquito abatement district or created their own mosquito control program must soon begin paying their share of waging the perennial insect war.

Encephalitis Outbreak

Since 1984, when a surprise outbreak of the mosquito-borne St. Louis encephalitis virus infected 16 people countywide, killing one and contributing to the deaths of two others, the county Department of Health Services has paid the bill for controlling mosquitoes in more than 40 non-member cities.

Most of those cities are in the South Bay and San Gabriel Valley. Currently, no cities in the South Bay have joined a district, although El Segundo, Lomita, Hawthorne and Lawndale have applied for membership in one. In addition, Torrance has formed its own mosquito control program.

County officials say the cities have been reluctant to join because, until the 1984 outbreak, only a handful of cases of mosquito-borne encephalitis had ever been reported in the county.

Since the outbreak, at least four more cases have been recorded. Last July, a resident of Norwalk and a resident of Covina were hospitalized for several weeks, and finally recovered, after contracting St. Louis encephalitis from mosquitoes, according to health officials.

Budget Pressures

The virus, which attacks the brain and nervous system, causes symptoms ranging from mild fever to delirium and severe seizures.

Bob Gates, director of the Department of Health Services, told the County Board of Supervisors Tuesday that because of budget pressures, his department does not want to provide $296,000 that had been earmarked for July through December for controlling mosquitoes in the non-member cities.

The board stopped short of acting on Gates’ request, but Supervisor Pete Schabarum asked county staff members to devise a plan to pressure the cities to begin paying for their own mosquito control services by late this year or early next year.

Except for those cities, every city in the county pays part of its property tax revenues to a mosquito abatement district, or has created its own control program.

Supervisor Deane Dana complained that despite two years of negotiations, the cities have dragged their feet on applying for membership in a district.

“It’s been two years and many cities still aren’t paying. . . . My opinion is that something slipped through the cracks,” Dana said.

Nevertheless, he opposed Gates’ proposal to cut off funds July 1, arguing that some cities “are very small, and where are they going to get the money, all of a sudden on the first of July, when we tell them there’s no more money?”

Ray Taylor, city manager of Rolling Hill Estates, said negotiations have taken so long because “we’re talking about a lot of cities, all of them wanting to know if this is a cost-effective thing to do.”

He said that at a meeting later this month he will recommend that the Rolling Hills Estates City Council begin paying $1,900 a year for the mosquito control services, with the county matching that amount.

“Notwithstanding the fact that it isn’t a great deal of money . . . we’re in a very tight budget situation and every dollar really matters to us,” Taylor said.

The health department’s Gates said the county has offered to pay half the cost borne by every city that joins a district, but said it has taken time “to persuade all these cities to give up some of their tax base.”

The county’s bill amounts to more than $500,000 a year, and pays for the testing of birds, which bring encephalitis into the region, and mosquitoes, which sting birds and then transfer the virus to humans.

Abatement districts also maintain “sentinel chicken flocks”--groups of chickens kept in open-air cages in six locations around the county, whose sole duty is to attract passing mosquitoes. The chickens are then regularly tested for the disease.

In addition, teams of mosquito control experts roam the county seeking out pools of stagnant water, non-chlorinated swimming pools and slow-moving river areas where newborn mosquito “wrigglers” thrive and grow to maturity. The teams use pesticides, mosquito-smothering oils, and hungry minnows to kill the wrigglers.

Frank Pelsue Jr., general manager of the Southeast Mosquito Abatement District, told the board that already this year encephalitis has been detected in mosquitoes or birds in El Monte and Covina, where his district has been hired by the county to fight mosquitoes. He said that such findings occur almost every year and are not cause for alarm.

Pelsue said that only one San Gabriel Valley city--San Marino--belongs to his district. Pasadena has its own mosquito control program.

He said the Imperial Valley has had “an unusually early year” of mosquito breeding, and the San Gabriel Valley is acting as a conduit for potentially disease-laden mosquitoes that spread from the Imperial Valley region to Los Angeles.

Norman Hauret, manager of the Los Angeles County West Mosquito Abatement District, told the board that the disease has also been detected in birds or mosquitoes in the South Bay, where his district is being paid by the county to fight the pests.