Does Evanston Need A Mosquito Abatement District?

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

Introduced by Rep. Jim Durkin, the bill proposes to shut down the four mosquito abatement districts, which operate as separate taxing units, by the end of 2015. 

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

“I cannot comprehend this waste of taxpayer dollars when we have existing government resources for mosquito control," former State Representative and former Northfield Village President John Birkinbine said in the announcement. "I have lived in states across the country and Illinois is the only state that I have lived in that has mosquito control districts.”

But David Zazra, a spokesperson for the North Suburban Mosquito Abatement District says his agency's work is vital in maintaining North Shore residents' quality of life. The district serves the communities of Evanston, Skokie, Glencoe, Lincolnwood, Glenview, Morton Grove, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Golf, Northfield, Northbrook, Winnetka, and part of Niles.

According to Zazra, there were 290 human cases of West Nile in Illinois last summer, including 173 in Cook County and 19 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."

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.