Wet June Means Banner Year For State's Mosquito Population
BOSTON (CBS) -- It is a bad year for mosquitoes, and we can blame all the rain we've had the past month.
But the state is trying to provide some relief.
In Sudbury, June's flooding rains created huge breeding grounds and as a result, waves and waves of mosquitos.
"If we get 200-300 mosquitos in a trap that is a large population, so when we get a thousand (in one trap) ..that is much larger population."
And that is what David Henley is seeing these days, mosquito traps overflowing, three - four times the normal catch.
All the result of a soaking wet June.
So in matter of hours, trucks capable of wide-spread spraying will hit the roads west of Boston.
"We are going to spray large sections of Framingham, Sudbury and Waltham for the remainder of this week," Henley said.
Henley who oversees mosquito control for the state says not only are we seeing tons of mosquitos but now a new nasty disease carrying breed known as the "tiger" mosquito is showing up.
"In Massachusetts they have already been found four years in a row in New Bedford and they have already been found this month in New Bedford."
A mosquito carrying the deadly West Nile virus was found in late June in Whitman.
To combat West Nile, part-time summer state workers on bikes are busy every day dropping larvicide or mosquito killing packets into storm drains. There are prime breeding grounds. At least 70,000 storm drains will get this treatment probably from Cam Kelley.
"We get tons of questions all the time, either positive or negative, people wondering what the heck we are doing to these basins," Kelley says.
The spraying in Middlesex County, specifically Framingham, will begin Tuesday night.
