MOSQUITO WARS

A new approach to controlling mosquitoes through marsh management cuts reliance on spraying and is showing promise elsewhere, but Glynn County is fighting to keep its old ways.

  By DAVID ROYER                                    
  The Brunswick News   
                                                           
  Bzzzzzz — swat!       
  Newcomers to Southeast Georgia are just discovering what locals have come to expect every year around this time.
  Clouds of hungry mosquitoes are swarming in the muddy bogs in Glynn County's lowlands.  Other parts of Georgia already have been hit hard by an early wave of the pests.
  To head off the attack this year, Glynn County officials are pushing forward with the tried-and-true control method they have favored since the 1980s — dredging a series of tidal ditches in two of the main mosquito breeding grounds, on Little St. Simons and Jekyll islands.
  "Those small areas are responsible for about 60 percent of mosquitoes," County Commission Chair Cap Fendig said, citing a figure he said the county's mosquito control division came up with a few years ago. 
  Fendig returned Friday from a visit with U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-1, who promised to support the county in its fight to obtain permits to dredge the ditches from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 
  But the Corps and some environmental groups say ditching is out of date and that there may be a better solution to the coast's mosquito woes.
     
  Faced with a difficult battle to gain the permits needed to maintain the ditches on Little St. Simons and Jekyll islands, county officials and Little St. Simons Island representatives say the only option is to spray more chemicals on mosquito-prone marshes – and that is an option that makes no one happy. 
  "I think this year, they're going have to purchase more pesticides," said Duane Harris, a former state Coastal Resources Division director now working as a consultant for Little St. Simons Island, a private island and nature preserve that wraps around the northeast shore of St. Simons Island.
  Harris is supporting the county's efforts to open up a series of dozens of straight-line, tidally influenced ditches dug at the north end of Little St. Simons Island some 20 years ago to open up stagnant marshes.
  Here is how they work: Mosquitoes lay their eggs in the muddy banks of the ditches, and when the tide flows out, the eggs go with it.
  Fewer eggs mean fewer chemicals are needed to keep populations down.

  In the marshes of Glynn County, the ditches tend to fill in with sediment and need to be cleared out with a rotary ditcher. The last time this was done was in 2003.
  Still, the ditches are a cost-effective alternative to spraying larvicide from a helicopter over the marshes to kill the eggs, according to the county's mosquito control director, Peter Taylor.
  Spraying can cost up to $20,000 an hour for chemicals alone.
  Over 10 years, ditching can provide effective mosquito control for $70,000 less than the cost of chemical spraying over the same period, Taylor said, citing a 1990 study by the mosquito extermination commission in Ocean County, N.J.
  Over 25 years, the savings jump to $630,000. 

   But others say that mosquito management has evolved over the past 20 years, and newer methods may be able to preserve fragile marshland while saving the county money in the long run. 
  "Ditching by itself is not a plan, it is a tool," said Daniel Parshley, Executive Director of the Glynn Environmental Coalition in Brunswick.
 
  Over the past few years, the county has been forced to obtain emergency permits to clear out the mosquito ditches when the bugs get bad enough to pose a health hazard.           

  This year, the county commission voted to spend $10,000 to hire a consultant, Register & Associates of McDonough, to persuade Army Corps officials to hand over the ditching permits. The first meeting could occur as soon as next week.                

  Parshley says that money would be better spent developing a comprehensive, long range plan for mosquito control.  "Glynn County fighting a plan shows that they have no interest in saving money," he said.  "Instead, we keep bumbling from emergency to emergency."                    

  Meanwhile, officials from the Corps have said that they would rather see the county use a more modern method called Open Marsh Water Management. 
  Old-style rotary ditching machines created straight ditches and piled mud up on the side of banks, potentially altering the natural environment, some scientists believe.         

  Open Marsh Water Management would plug up some of the existing ditches to create small pools where mosquito-eating fish would live. It might also require that some straight-line ditches be dug into more natural curves.   

  The technique has been used successfully in the Northeast, but has seen limited use on the South Atlantic Coast.
  In a way, environmentalists say, the techniques are already in use in Glynn County — in the undisturbed natural areas of the coast, where mosquitoes and their natural predators are kept in balance. 

  In 2003, the state Department of Natural Resources Coastal Resources Division encouraged the county to adopt the new practice while limiting ditching, as part of a long-term mosquito reduction plan.                    

  Some open marsh techniques have been used in other parts of Georgia's coast.

  Henry Lewandowski, director of Chatham County Mosquito Control, said that county has successfully used mosquito-eating fish in some fresh water and brackish water ponds.     

  But in Georgia salt marshes, Lewandowski said Open Marsh Water Management may create problems.  "A standing water situation has to be looked at very carefully from a mosquito standpoint," he said. "If there's a lot of standing grass in that pool, then mosquito fish may not be able to get around effectively." 

  Lewandowski pointed to research suggesting that old straight-line ditches may actually increase the spread of spartina, the grass that grows in salt-water marshes.

  According to Fendig, Glynn County's unique coastal ecology means the techniques just won't work here.  "We have some unique coastal dynamics that other areas don't have," he said. "Our average change of tide level is seven to eight feet, where the rest of the United States is about a foot and a half, at most. That dynamic alone makes it difficult to put in place the kind of system they're wanting to put in."
  Harris added that when the ditches were initially dug years ago, some contained pools for mosquito fish. They did not work well in Glynn's tidal environment, he said.

  He and Fendig both concede that, even if their fight to obtain permits from the Corps is successful, it will be next year before any work could get started.         

  "I don't know what their problem is, why this is not being approved," Harris said.  "Nothing has changed, so what's the difference now?"