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Ed Yeates ReportingGovernment agencies are asking for our help this weekend as we move outdoors to do yard work. They want us to look for standing water then get rid of it.
Standing, stagnant water, it’s what rainstorm after rainstorm has left behind all over the valley. Now as the weather warms the folks who control mosquitoes need our help.
In the rural pasturelands, Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement teams work as quickly as they can trying to treat all the potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes. They've been blossoming all over the place with all this moisture.
Sam Dickson, Director, S.L. City Mosquito Abatement: "Normally we would have people putting out fish in ornamental pools. We would have them treating sources in the city. But we've moved all those people out of the city and into the rural areas, trying to get the water along the highways and the fields treated first."
Rain after rain has been hatching batch after batch of mosquitoes. Fortunately the ones we're seeing the most of right now are what are called nuisance mosquitoes -- they bite during the day and some at night, but they don't carry diseases. But Sam Dickson says a few of the potential disease carriers have started to show up recent weeks.
Sam Dickson: "The mosquitoes that lay their eggs in that are the ones that can transmit disease, and they're just starting to come out. The water doesn't have to be more than three or four days old before they start laying eggs, and within a week we can get adults off of those sources."
And those sources could be as small as a half a cup of standing water. So Dickson and his colleagues are asking all of us to survey our yards this weekend. Get rid of standing water in rain gutters, pools, bird baths, pots and pans. Help eliminate all the potential places - more than ever this year - where the mosquito squadrons can take off from.
Dickson says we'll probably see more mosquitoes this weekend and in the weeks to come because it's been almost impossible to get to all the breeding grounds.
