Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

After this year’s abnormally high snowfall, and subsequent melt, officials and citizens have been forced to confront more mosquitos than usual. Because of the higher melt, water levels are reaching new highs, meaning eight years worth of mosquito eggs are hatching. On June 28, The Utah County Commission voted to approve an extension to the flooding disaster declaration until July 31 to help fund the mosquito abatement.

“You have got to understand this isn’t mosquito eradication, it’s mosquito abatement, which means we’re going to keep them in control or in check,” said Dan Miller, director for Utah County mosquito abatement.

Miller said these extra funds, and the extension, met all of their needs and they will not need to extend the state of emergency further when it ends on July 31. Without the extra funding, the insecticide and other chemicals for mosquito abatement would have run out by August, he said, leaving Utah County with almost two months of no mosquito abatement.

The shortage of supplies was largely due to the surge of the mosquito population. Just this season they have trapped 136,000 mosquitos around the county, not including any larvae or adults that have been killed or are still roaming. According to the online tracker, the department records data from 35 traps throughout Utah County.

The season starts on Memorial Day and generally goes until the first week of September, depending on the weather. Last week, the county trapped 32,000 mosquitos — at the same time in 2002 they trapped 8,000.

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

The reason for mosquito abatement is, primarily, to protect the public from mosquito-borne diseases — along with lessening a nuisance to residents.

Diseases from mosquitos, such as West Nile Virus, can be life threatening or make someone very sick, which is why they are working diligently to ensure the mosquito abatement and testing is thorough.

“We are all about protecting the health of the public,” Miller said. “You can’t put a price on a human life.”

Abatement means not all mosquitos will disappear, but it will be possible to live comfortably near bodies of water, including Utah Lake. Miller said before mosquito abatement was established in Utah County, people living near the lake would go outside with nets around their faces and bodies fully-covered due to the sheer number of mosquitos.

The updates on the number of trapped mosquitos, and the type of mosquito being found, is available on the county health department website. The plan for this season is to kill the mosquito larvae in the water before they hatch into adults. In previous years, methods of mosquito abatement included spraying insecticide by truck and distributing it into the water by hand.

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

“It’s much more efficient to treat the water because we will kill 95% of the mosquitos that are coming out in that particular area,” Miller said.

While truck spraying is still ongoing, by-hand distribution has mostly been replaced by drones in recent years. The mosquito abatement team was renting the drones for several years, which meant they were sometimes unavailable. The department purchased two drones this year.

Each drone can cover eight acres of land in five minutes, which used to take most of a full day for one person to finish by hand. On Tuesday, a team in the Provo area used the drone to distribute the grain with the insecticide inside across eight acres in seven minutes and eight seconds.

Sierra King, visual observer for Utah County mosquito abatement, said the speed is “the biggest takeaway the drone offers.” The drones are named after a previous employee at Utah County Mosquito Abatement, who passed away two years ago from COVID-19.

“He loved this idea of the drone. Even when we’re first starting this thought it was so revolutionary. And so we’ve named the drones Rex one and Rex two. He was a field inspector who started with the company in the 70s,” Miller said. “He was so good at what he did. I mean, he could find mosquitos everywhere. So I called him the mosquito whisperer. … This is one way we can keep him around.”

Abatement process

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

The main kinds of insecticide used are sprayed out of trucks. Only eight ounces of the insecticide cover one acre. This process kills any flying insect on contact, which is why it is done at night when mosquitos are the most active insects.

The other insecticide, dispersed through the drones, is a small piece of grain dropped into the water. The insecticide is inside of the grain, which dissolves when it hits the water, and the chemical, a bacterial spore, infects the mosquito larvae.

“(It) only affects mosquito larva and black fly larva,” Miller said. “You can eat it, people or any animal, any other aquatic insect doesn’t hurt him. It just burrows a little hole through the intestinal lining of the mosquito larva and kills it, and it is extremely effective.”

The abatement team decided where to go based on requests from residents and data recorded from traps or other studies. In addition to the natural bodies of water, catch basins are common homes for mosquitos.

“We have a biking program that rides around and treats all the catch basins and storm drains and so they’ll treat about 22,000 catch basins every month,” Miller said.

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

Trapped mosquitos, he added, “are all female mosquitos because males don’t bother you.” Male mosquitos do not drink blood, instead feeding off of water and plant juices nectar, according to the National Environment Agency.

After the mosquitos are trapped they are taken to the lab, sorted by species and any species that have a possibility of containing a disease are tested. Through their testing, experts hope to discover diseases — like Malaria or West Nile — before a human contracts the disease.

Danger of mosquitos

No Malaria or West Nile has been found in the mosquito population of Utah County, but the abatement department continues to test their trapped mosquitos to ensure the public is safe. Of the mosquitos that are trapped, 2% have the potential and ability to carry Malaria and 80% have the ability to carry West Nile.

There are two types of mosquitos — permanent water types and floodwater types. The permanent water types can carry diseases. Miller said the biggest concern this season is the population fluctuation between permanent and floodwater species.

When they tested the trapped population at the beginning of spring, floodwater mosquitos were one third to one half of the population, and the permanent water mosquitos were two thirds to one half of the population.

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

“We’ve now switched, the floodwater mosquitos are 10 or 15% of what we trap, and the permanent water mosquitos are now at 80 or 85%,” Miller said.

There are currently three individuals with Malaria who live in the area, but they contracted the disease when visiting another country, experts determined. However, now that they are back from their trip in Utah County, if an Anopheles mosquito were to bite that person, Miller said, “then all of a sudden that mosquito now can transmit it locally, but the probability of that occurring is extremely low.”