Politics & Government

Does Glenview Need Mosquito Abatement?

A new House Bill in the Illinois legislature proposes the elimination of Cook County's mosquito abatement districts, but are they actually keeping the general population from getting sick during summer months?

A member of the Illinois General Assembly recently introduced House Bill 2815, which proposed to eliminate Cook County's mosquito abatement districts and transfer those departments' duties to the county's Department of Environmental Control. 

The Northfield Township GOP even published a Patch Announcement essentially endorsing the bill, citing a statement by the president of the Better Government Association that called mosquito abatement districts “the poster child for government waste."

But David Zazra, a spokesperson for the North Suburban Mosquito Abatement District says their agency's work is vital in maintaining North Shore residents' quality of life.

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According to Zazra, there were 290 human cases of West Nile in IL last summer, 173 of those in Cook County and 19 of those in the North Suburban district.

"We as a mosquito abatement district really do a pretty good job of preventing a great many more people from getting ill," Zazra said. "We think it has a lot to do with the efforts put forth by our district year after year."

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He mentioned the type of West Nile outbreak Dallas experienced last summer, which was so bad the city's mayor declared a state of emergency, according to the New York Times.

Zazra says his district performs two primary operations — surveillance and control. They trap and study mosquitoes that emerge every year, to understand the type of diseases they might carry. In the winter, district supervisors survey foreclosed homes and abandoned pools to find possible, future breeding sites.

Afterward, Zazra says the districts use natural bacterial products to control about 60,000 mosquito reproduction basins to fight the larval population and decrease the amount of mosquitoes in the wild. 

"We're doing all this before people get sick," Zazra said. "If you wait until people get sick, it's too late."

Regarding House Bill 2815, Zazra said the abatement districts are "becoming a political issue where it's a public health issue."

"We're not a political organization, we're a local government agency trying to help people from getting sick," he added.

What do you think? Should abatement districts help keep Cook County's mosquito population under control, or should their funding could be used elsewhere? Tell us in the comments.


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