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Tuesday April 25, 2006 Edition
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Bridport And Cornwall will Decide Whether To Form States 2nd Insect Control District

Tuesday April 25, 2006

By Ed Barna

The fate of millions will hang in the balance Tuesday, as Bridport and Cornwall voters decide whether to form an anti-mosquito coalition similar to the Insect Control District that for two decades has helped Brandon, Leicester, Salisbury and Goshen.

Bad mosquito years had impelled those two towns and Weybridge to look at the possibility of either joining the BLSG group or starting their own district, though Weybridge decided against pursuing the matter for now. Bridport and Salisbury formed a joint committee to look into the issue, headed by Bridport's Tom Vanacore, and Tuesday's vote in the two towns will culminate their investigative process.

Legally, insect control districts are “quasi-municipal” agencies, comparable in that respect to solid waste districts. Towns give up some of their authority to the multi-town agency--leading to long discussions of how to balance local control with agency effectiveness, Vanacore said.

By state law, insect control districts have access to 10 percent of the State's annual boat registration monies, on grounds that the bugs are “aquatic nuisances.” Though Grand Isle County towns at one point considered forming a district, so far there is only BLSG.

“Aquatic nuisances” was how the Madeleine Kunin administration rationalized a state role in scientific mosquito control, after a year during which tourism suffered all over the state because of publicity based largely on the area around Lake Dunmore. Personally inspecting the situation at Branbury Beach on what happened to be a clear day with the wind blowing, Kunin declared the swarms to be “a weight-loss program,” and from then on the state has stayed involved.

It might be supposed that two districts would compete for funding and cause problems for each other. But the opposite has proved to be true: BLSG has helped the new district take shape, and one likely part of its operations--having a cropdusting plane--could solve one of BLSG's biggest practical and financial headaches.

For the chronically infested BLSG area, scientific mosquito control has meant having entomologist Jon Turmel and his associates find out which species were in which habitats under what conditions. Surprise: it wasn't the 20,000-acre swamp that was the big culprit, it was the Otter Creek lowlands, where flooding activated the aggressive and long-lived Aedes vexans.

A corps of volunteer bugspotters looks for “wrigglers” in the water of identified hot spots (such volunteers have made themselves available already in Bridport and Cornwall, Vanacore said). To keep them from hatching into winged adults, the district drops corn pellets saturated with a biological substance called BTI (similar to the BT many gardeners use on cabbage worms), but has to do so at the correct stage of the bugs' development.

And there lies the problem: there being no cropduster, BLSG has to hire a helicopter out of Pembroke, New Hampshire to drop the BTI. The company won't come to treat less than 1,000 acres, according to Turmel.

Which wouldn't work for Bridport and Cornwall, Vanacore said. In contrast to the Otter Creek area, the Lemon Fair area has a lot of widely separated bug spots, usually involving Aedes trivitatis rather than vexans, he said (though they do have some vexans, too).

So a major part of their preparation has been to look for a plane, he said. They have found a used one for sale in Arkansas, a Cessna 188 Ag Pickup, which either the new district or someone working for the district would own.

“We have a lot of aviation history and a lot of experience in this region,” Vanacore observed. A lot of that history has the name “Quesnel” attached to it, and this is no exception.

Dick Quesnel used to provide cropdusting and other agricultural application services to BLSG, apple growers, and farmers generally. But he was flying from Ed Peet's private field in Cornwall--Quesnel said he didn't want to risk a Middlebury State Airport pesticide accident fouling East Middlebury's aquifer--and neighbors complained about the noise.

An Act 250 ruling said Quesnel could no longer operate at dawn--the one time the winds are quiet enough to be sure pesticides don't drift, he said.  Airplanes being supremely portable, he took off, permanently, for Michigan.

But younger members of the clan are willing to take up where he left off, flying out of the state airport, Vanacore said. Meanwhile, he said, unexpected help has come from a Middlebury College student environmental program, whose students have been doing global positioning system mapping of the mosquito-affected terrain.

Turmel said the funding situation looks good, even though boat registrations have been dropping. Money unused last year, adding to this year's, will result in about a $120,000 war chest, he said.

Also, the threat of West Nile virus transmission brought $100,000 in federal help, Turmel said. But, he said, deficit reduction legislation will cut this by 40 percent this year (down to $60,000) and that sum will take a 50 percent hit the following year (down to $30,000).

Even so, the stakes for mosquito control are higher now than simply avoiding nuisances. Turmel said West Nile is definitely in Addison County, in birds, though the chances of transmission to people are not high.

Health Department epidemiologist Patsy Tassler said that starting in June, the program testing dead birds for West Nile will resume. If you find dead birds, call the game warden.

Tassler said West Nile is most dangerous for those 50 and older or those with compromised immune systems. The symptoms that might justify a trip to an emergency room include fever, headache, body aches, and a stiff neck, she said.

“Barring any major weather event, we should be okay,” Turmel said. One question mark, though, is what effect the relatively warm winter will have on mosquitoes wintering over.

“I got bitten this morning,” Turmel said, “in my own house.”


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