Water utility, Public Service Board detail plan to fight West Nile and Zika
The Public Service Board and El Paso Water Utilities have developed a plan to prevent mosquitoes at ponding areas in El Paso.
The fear is the mosquitoes could not only be carrying the West Nile virus, but the Zika virus as well.
The PSB has identified dozens of ponding areas around El Paso that tend to hold water. The plan is to treat those ponds using different methods, including using old gypsum, fish that eat larvae, and larvae that eats other larvae.
“We have several hundred stormwater ponds, many of which tend to hold water, so we got input from researchers at UTEP and established we need to do several things,” EPWU Vice President of Operations Alan Shubert told ABC-7.
“The city has vector control, but its resources are limited,” Shubert said, “Vector has got nine employees and nine vector trucks so they’ve got a lot to cover.”
Shubert said PSB and EPWU have partnered with the City of El Paso Health Department in order to reach out to residents, but also to treat its own ponding facilities.
“So we’ve put together four or five approaches we are going to take with the ponds that we have that tend to hold water,” Shubert said. “We’ve accounted for about 44 of those so far. There may be others, but thus far we’ve accounted for 44 ponds that tend to hold water.”
Shubert said those ponds that should drain and don’t are being treated with gypsum, which changes the soil structure at the bottom of the pond and allows them to drain.
“We don’t know about the long term,” Shubert said, “but in the short term, it’s been extremely successful.”
The gypsum is coming from recycled sheet rock that has no other use.
“The ponds that tend to stay wet because of water table, like in the Upper or Lower Valley, we’re treating with what’s called mosquito fish,” Shubert said. “These fish actually live off mosquito larvae.”
Shubert said they are also using commercial larvicide, a biological treatment with bacteria that eats the larvae. The last resort to fight mosquitoes is pesticide and EPWU has contracted a pesticide applicator to carry out that task.
The public will start to see signs at the ponds, telling them they have been treated, according to Shubert.
“I do want to emphasize this,” Shubert said. “In talking about the Zika virus with the experts at UTEP, one of the things that they told us was that (Zika) species of mosquitoes was different from the one that carries West Nile. They’re more inclined to stay around your house, so it’s very important that people take personal responsibility for standing water around their home. Pet bowls, fountains, tires or anything that tends to hold water, is going to be more attractive to Zika.”
