Major U.S. Utility Takes First Steps To Fight Zika

A major Texas utility has laid out plans to fight Zika and West Nile Virus by targeting mosquitoes.

El Paso Water Utilities Vice President of Operations Alan Shubert said the utility is doing outreach to residents and treating its own ponding areas.

Ponds that should drain, but are not draining, are being treated with gypsum to help them move. The gypsum comes from recycled sheetrock, according to KVIA. Officials are also adding fish that eat mosquito larvae to certain ponds. The utility is using commercial larvicide and has contracted with a pesticide applicator.

The public service board, which controls the utility, “has identified dozens of ponding areas around El Paso that tend to hold water. The plan is to treat those ponds using different methods, including using old gypsum, fish that eat larvae, and larvae that eats other larvae,” the report said.

Shubert described the breadth of the utility’s effort.

"We have several hundred stormwater ponds, many of which tend to hold water, so we got input from researchers at [the University of Texas at El Paso] and established we need to do several things," he said. "The city has vector control, but its resources are limited. Vector has got nine employees and nine vector trucks so they've got a lot to cover."

"So we've put together four or five approaches we are going to take with the ponds that we have that tend to hold water," Shubert said. "We've accounted for about 44 of those so far. There may be others, but thus far we've accounted for 44 ponds that tend to hold water."

Shubert also had a message for homeowners on how they can help.

"I do want to emphasize this," he said. "In talking about the Zika virus with the experts at UTEP, one of the things that they told us was that (Zika) species of mosquitoes was different from the one that carries West Nile. They're more inclined to stay around your house, so it's very important that people take personal responsibility for standing water around their home. Pet bowls, fountains, tires or anything that tends to hold water, is going to be more attractive to Zika."

Zika has exploded throughout Latin America in the past year and is now documented in 20 nations. U.S. officials are gauging the current threat level in the U.S.

“Federal health officials said [in May] they believe thousands of people may have contracted the Zika virus before returning to the U.S. and they remain concerned that the virus might commence ongoing transmission in the U.S.,” ABC News reported.

Related to dengue, yellow fever, and West Nile, Zika has a foothold in Latin America’s urban areas where decrepit water and sewer systems provide a comfortable breeding ground for mosquitoes.

“The mosquito lays its eggs in containers of water, of a sort that are especially common in the huge slums of Latin American cities. With unreliable access to piped water, people there store water in rooftop cisterns, buckets and the like. Old tires and other debris can also become mosquito habitat,” The New York Times reported.

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