{"id":26638,"date":"2018-08-29T09:58:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T13:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=26638"},"modified":"2018-08-29T09:58:58","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T13:58:58","slug":"county-needs-to-answer-questions-on-mosquito-spraying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=26638","title":{"rendered":"County needs to answer questions on mosquito spraying"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nathaniel Smith<\/strong>, Columnist, The Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The citizens’ organization Don\u2019t Spray Me! wishes to work as much as possible with facts and evidence concerning pesticide spraying, and within the modes of democratic governance in our society.<\/p>\n

Most of us will readily agree that the different levels of government should in turn work openly with citizens and taxpayers.<\/p>\n

In every press release about pesticide spraying, the Health Department says that it sprays only \u201cafter exhausting all other available mosquito control strategies.\u201d <\/p>\n

Has the County reached out to the 73 municipalities to help them educate their residents about mosquito control, and to suggest the many precautions that residents should take in the regrettable case of actually being sprayed? (As far as we can tell, a press release saying \u201cWe are going to spray you soon\u201d is about it in most cases.)<\/p>\n

Where and when has the County larvicided (or helped municipalities to larvicide) pools of water and storm drains as needed to prevent the development of larvae from mosquito eggs (the primary non-toxic mosquito control strategy)? (It can\u2019t or won\u2019t say.)<\/p>\n

Where within each municipality tested are the mosquito traps set on which the County supposedly bases its spraying decisions? (It won\u2019t say.)<\/p>\n

If West Nile Virus is such a problem in PA, why do 29 of the state\u2019s 67 counties have \u201cno active county surveillance program\u201d at all?<\/p>\n

Why does the \u201cVector Index\u201d level at which the County sprays municipalities vary so widely, if the Vector Index is a reliable scientific tool? (And, in what is claimed to be such a critical mosquito year, why do the online Chesco data stop at 7\/30\/18?)<\/p>\n

Finally, how does the County justify spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on its own brand of mosquito spraying when there are so many other critical needs?<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder that members of Don’t Spray Me! feel that citizens and their elected representative are being denied needed information in an important matter of environmental and human health?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nathaniel Smith, Columnist, The Times The citizens’ organization Don\u2019t Spray Me! wishes to work as much as possible with facts and evidence concerning pesticide spraying, and within the modes of democratic governance in our society. Most of us will readily agree that the different levels of government should in turn work openly with citizens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[138,6269,6298],"class_list":["post-26638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-chester-county","tag-featured","tag-mosquito-spraying"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26639,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26638\/revisions\/26639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}