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Providence Journal 9/1/00 Back
Another round of spraying slated tonight
By ANDREW GOLDSMITH
Journal Staff Writer
WESTERLY - Mosquitoes along 20 streets in the Sherwood Hills area will get another dose of pesticide tonight, because state tests found more mosquitoes there after Monday's spraying than they did before.Public Works Supt. John A. Fusaro Jr. said yesterday that several factors could have causedthe increase from 185 mosquitoes trapped over the course of a night to 220.
"A different batch of mosquitoes could have popped since that time," he said. "The weather is a lot more humid than it was a week or so ago."
Tests in Newport, which was also sprayed Monday, showed a drop from 30 to 23 mosquitoes, according to a state Department of Environmental Management spokeswoman.
The agency also announced yesterday that testing of 60 pools of mosquitoes taken from 25 traps Aug. 21 came up negative for the West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis, also known as EEE.
Rather than town officials handling tonight's spraying in Westerly, as they did Monday, Narragansett Pest Control will distribute the spray, starting at 9 o'clock. Their trucks will not be escorted by police, as the town trucks were. Fusaro said tonight's spraying would cover a far smaller area, and would be similar to other sprayings conducted as recently as last week with far less fanfare than Monday's.
The Monday night attack on the mosquitoes was prompted by the discovery of West Nile virus in a dead crow on Sherwood Drive. Tonight's action is a response to "numerous" phone calls from residents saying the mosquitoes were causing a nuisance, Fusaro said.
He said officials would check for mosquito larvae and drop larvicide from an airplane if necessary.
That step, too, would not be unusual - the town used a helicopter Aug. 4 to drop nearly 5,200 pounds of the larvicide BTI on 700 acres of swamp near Chapman Pond.
The pesticide to be used tonight, Sumithrin, is also used in pet shampoos, flea sprays and household insect sprays. DEM and the state Department of
Health recommend that people avoid direct contact with the pesticide, stay inside during the spraying and for at least 10 minutes afterward, close all windows and turn off air conditioners.
EEE was discovered in Westerly for three consecutive summers, beginning in 1996. Evidence of the disease was also found here in 1993, the year a Middletown boy died of the disease.
Trey Houtchens, 14, was one of three people to succumb to EEE in Rhode Island since 1983. The disease is fatal to about half the people it infects.
Even in years when the town's mosquito population has been seemingly disease free, town and state officials have often sprayed or taken other steps to reduce their numbers.
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