Torrance’s Anti-Mosquito Effort Raises Health Issue : Disease: The city didn’t join a South Bay abatement project. Concerns are high after the recent discovery of disease-laden insects in two locations.

In the far-flung world of the Los Angeles mosquito wars, Torrance is an island unto itself.

Although other South Bay cities are part of a united approach to mosquito control, Torrance is waging a solitary fight against the pesky insect. In the mid-1980s, the city ruled out joining a regional mosquito-abatement district and instead continued with its own control efforts.

Now, the discovery of encephalitis-carrying mosquitoes near the Mobil Oil Corp. refinery in northeast Torrance has provoked questions about whether the city’s independent stance is helping, or hindering, public health.

“From what I’ve seen in the paper, and from what I’ve been told, they’re not doing a good job,” Torrance City Councilman Timothy Mock said late last week.

Mock said he has grown frustrated trying to persuade the city to improve its mosquito control over the past 18 months. Instead, he plans to ask the Public Safety Committee he chairs to look into alternatives.

Others have raised the same concerns as Mock.

A review of correspondence shows that officials with the mosquito abatement district have repeatedly expressed concerns about the effectiveness of Torrance’s program. Also, a 1986 letter from a Los Angeles County health official specifically warned Torrance of the dangers of mosquitoes breeding on oil refinery grounds.

Just last week, in a stern letter to the city, a state health official questioned whether the Torrance staff is properly trained to handle mosquito control in the face of the recent finding of the encephalitis-carrying mosquitoes at two locations in Torrance. The encephalitis strain found in the mosquitoes generally infects horses, but occasionally can cause flu-like symptoms in adults. In extremely rare cases, it can cause death.

The city should consider seeking outside mosquito-control experts “in the interest of public health and safety,” Charles M. Myers, regional chief of the environmental management branch of the state Department of Health Services, said in a letter Wednesday.

City officials said Friday that they are reviewing that letter before deciding what to do.

“We’re trying to get to the bottom of this,” said Kathy Keane, assistant to City Manager LeRoy J. Jackson.

Jackson said the city control effort “is and continues to be an aggressive program of abatement.” But he concedes that it may have shortcomings and said his office will review possible changes.

The questions about the Torrance control program have been highlighted by the fact that the infected mosquitoes were found not by city workers but by the Los Angeles County West Mosquito Abatement District, the same district that Torrance declined to join years ago.

The city has no trapping program. The district sets traps in Torrance to protect the other South Bay cities it serves, said Robert Saviskas, the district’s executive director. “In this particular case, thank goodness we did,” he said.

Saviskas depicts Torrance as a weak link in his district’s control efforts.

“These matters have taken on serious public health implications with the isolation of the encephalitis virus and are of grave concern to the district and adjacent communities,” Saviskas wrote Monday in a letter to Jackson.

Others contend that the city program has been doing the job. They note that Torrance has not been plagued by major mosquito infestations. And the city receives only about one mosquito-related complaint a week, said Carole Rountree, senior administrative analyst for the city Street Department.

Torrance spends $65,000 annually for its program, in which one city employee works full time on mosquito abatement. That employee uses two major control methods: stocking bodies of water with a mosquito-eating fish and spraying a common bacterial insecticide to kill mosquitoes.

By contrast, the regional abatement district employs up to 25 people, depending on the season.

The mosquitoes found in Torrance tested positive for Western Equine Encephalitis. Mosquitoes carrying the same virus were also found in Malibu.

The infected Torrance mosquitoes were trapped Sept. 24 and 25 at two sites: 1717 Torrance Blvd., near Western Avenue, and 2535 Del Amo Blvd. It was the first time in 30 years of testing that infected mosquitoes were found in Torrance, Saviskas said.

The finds were made public last weekend, spawning a flurry of telephone calls to government officials from concerned South Bay residents and horse owners.

County health officials say only six cases of human infection from the encephalitis virus have been reported in California since 1968. But they have urged residents to check their properties and remove mosquito-breeding spots such as standing water in bird baths, planters and swimming pools.

Abatement district officials responded to the discovery of the infected mosquitoes by inspecting the nearby Mobil refinery grounds Sunday. They found “multiple unchecked breeding grounds,” Saviskas wrote the city this week.

Mobil, in turn, has decided to pay the district $1,500 a month to control mosquitoes on the refinery grounds. Refinery Manager Joel H. Maness said: “If it’s a matter of the potential health and safety of our employees and the surrounding community, we’re going to spend it.”

Torrance officials say they have steered clear of joining the abatement district for a variety of reasons.

“The (city) Street Department has felt rather strongly about its ability to serve the area,” Jackson said. And when neighboring cities joined in the mid-1980s, Torrance thought it could control mosquitoes more cheaply on its own, Jackson said.

Saviskas disagrees, saying that Torrance could join for an annual fee of $22,450. Jackson said he has been told fees could drive the price higher.