(Appeared in mid-May 2022 West Newsmagazine)
When it was time to deliver his staff report at the May 9 Ballwin Board of Aldermen meeting, Public Works Director Jim Link began by uttering one word in a most menacing tone: "Mosquitoes!"
Link’s recommendation was to enlist St. Louis County to aid in Ballwin mosquito hunting. Their role would be truck-mounted fogging in a program known as "adulticiding." Link said the county would not be performing routine spraying, but would do so based on the results of trapping and testing adult mosquitoes throughout Ballwin for potential major diseases.
St. Louis County Vector Control furnished Ballwin with an eight-page document detailing where they would handle the adulticiding. The county will put traps in various places including creeks, areas of standing water, detention basins, drainage, culverts, ruts and ditches.
(Source: Adobe Stock)
Link said that in the past, Ballwin sprayed for mosquitoes themselves, taking care of the "larvaciding" portion of mosquito control by destroying larva. Then in 2010-2013, the city contracted out to St. Louis County to do larviciding and adulticiding.
Although Ballwin has done well handling the mosquito issue on its own, Link cited worker shortages as a reason to continue to seek the county's help. Ballwin's 2022 budget provides for 34 full-time employees, but public works department currently has just 26 full-time employees, plus three full- and one part-time seasonal employees.
Link also made it clear that he doesn’t want the quality of maintaining Ballwin streets to be adversely affected by too many staff hours dedicated to mosquito eradication.
After a lengthy discussion, the board rejected Link’s recommendation by a 5-2 margin, at least in the short-term. Before making a final decision on the matter at its May 23 meeting, the board is hoping to receive citizen input on the subject.
“I remember when we tried this a couple years ago with St. Louis County," Mayor Tim Pogue said. "I think we did it a couple years, and we received quite a few complaints, so we ended up going back to what we had been doing ourselves. I appreciate you looking outside the box but I still would have concerns going back to what it was; especially, if they’re only going on their trap results. It’s my understanding they will not go just on complaint.”
Alderman Michael Finley (Ward 1) followed Pogue.
“I did some research," Finley said. "Six or seven years ago, I made contact with an entomologist at one of the universities in Illinois. I asked him his thoughts on this whole thing, and he said it depends on your perception, or what you want your citizens to perceive. Do you want your citizens to perceive some active program? If that’s what you want and you want to put the truck out there, that’ll be OK. You’ll kill some of them. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine too. he net effect is not really that great.”
He added that he has wondered his whole life if fogging really works since, even with that, he and family members still get bit.
Still, Finley was one of just two who voted in favor of St. Louis County immediately helping out. He mentioned research he had found from Mississippi State University regarding a five-step approach of education, surveillance and sampling, source reduction, larvicide and adulticide. He said he believed that St. Louis County is acting correctly and doing its due diligence. He also noted that the county has a public health department, unlike Ballwin.
Alderman Frank Fleming (Ward 3) came to the same conclusion as Finley citing the department's employee shortage as a key factor.
However, he noted, "... most of the mosquitoes are behind your house, in the common ground, in creeks, whatever. I don’t know how much it (spraying) gets back there where they are the big problem; (how much it) makes contact and wipes them out. But I would just go with the county; and if it gets bad enough, we always have our truck and our guy ... If people are complaining, we can always reconsider that.”
Finley mentioned most of Ballwin’s surrounding communities use St. Louis County, which currently charges some $95/hour for its program. He added that studies show spraying is still safe to people and it doesn’t affect pollinators like bees as long as spraying continues at night.
However, in response to an inquiry from Finley, City Administrator Eric Sterman said Ellisville decided a couple years ago to stop doing adulticiding through the county. He said they don’t spray adult mosquitoes at all. They do larviciding by adding some tablets or pellets in standing water and other places of concern with a nominal amount of staff time involved.
In response to an inquiry from alderman David Siegel (Ward 4), Link said Ballwin already has someone ready to start spraying May 16 and usually has a supervisor and an operator do the task on a weekly basis.
Per questions from alderman Ross Bullington (Ward 4), Link added that the County already had its traps in place to monitor, and they relay that information to the city of Ballwin, which can start and stop any time with them. Meanwhile, Ballwin has been larviciding since Link has been there, and that will continue.
“There’s not a whole lot of things that St. Louis County does better than what we do right here in Ballwin,” alderman Mark Stallmann (Ward 2) said. “So I would be reluctant to do this.”
Finally, Pogue mentioned and Finley re-iterated that in the least, the May 9 meeting dialog could be an education process to remind citizens to remove any standing water from their property.
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