The Conservation Commission became the third town board, joining the Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee, not to support an Annual Town Meeting warrant article that would turn over Harvard’s mosquito control to the Central Massachusetts Mosquito Control Project.
The vote not to support the measure was 4-0-1, with Paul Willard abstaining.
Two Board of Health members, one in favor of the article and one opposed, presented their own views to the commission at its Thursday night meeting last week, but the commissioners appeared to have already been prepared with enough information to make up their minds.
Concern for health risks of mosquito-borne diseases
Longtime Still River resident and Board of Health member Lorin Johnson, who said he was representing only himself, expressed a sincere concern for the health risks from mosquitoes carrying Eastern equine encephalitis and West Nile virus, risks he sees spreading to central Massachusetts. “I’ve watched the crawl of EEE and West Nile from the southeast of the state,” Johnson said. “Expanding and coming this way, [they] began to look like something we should pay attention to.”
Board of Health member Sharon McCarthy, also speaking for herself, told the commission that Harvard’s Department of Public Works can already provide many of the services CMMCP offers, including catch basin and drainage maintenance, tire recycling, and certified larvacide application, if required. She said a bill pending in the state senate would let towns become pesticide certified to use adulticides on mature mosquitoes.
According to McCarthy and Johnson, CCMCP spraying is at residents’ requests. The commission expressed concern this “nuisance spraying” did not have oversight from the Board of Health or other town agencies.
The commission also questioned the actual magnitude of the problem and the efficacy of the spraying. McCarthy was skeptical of CMMCP’s claims that its spraying, limited to evenings, didn’t affect other species, in particular bees, which are known to fan outside air into their hives on hot nights.
A town and homeowner
responsibility?
McCarthy said that the responsibility for eliminating many mosquito breeding grounds falls mainly on town and property owners. Commissioner Wendy Sisson added that EEE-carrying mosquitoes favor the roots of cattails, Atlantic white cedar, and red swamp maple trees, all species that grow in wetlands where pesticides are usually prohibited. The mosquitoes’ preferred habit also explains why EEE is most prevalent in southeastern Massachusetts, she said.
Surveillance—trappingand testing mosquitoes—was the one service CMMCP provides that the commission did not question, nor did McCarthy suggest the town could provide.
More about CMMCP
The commissioners learned from a handout McCarthy distributed that CMMCP, as a sustaining member, had given almost $10,000 to the American Mosquito Control Association (AMCA) since 2007.
A later exploration of its website shows that AMCA lobbies Congress against specific pesticide regulations from the EPA, the Clean Water Act (with which the Conservation Commisssion complies), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, including its ban on pesticide use in National Wildlife Refuges and federal lands.
