Pools become nasty mosquito havens in foreclosure

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
Associated Press Writer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Mosquito control workers can measure the recession by the number of green, cloudy swimming pools they see - algae-covered havens for mosquitoes dotting neighborhoods hit by the foreclosure crisis.

Aside from their annoying bites, mosquitoes carry West Nile virus and other diseases. With the number of foreclosures rising, it's becoming a more-important challenge to track down abandoned homes with pools from suburban Washington, D.C., to California.

In Phoenix, for example, the number of pools left untended - often because of foreclosures - rose from about 6,000 in 2007 to more than 9,100 last year, said John Townsend, division manager for Maricopa County Vector Control.

"If we keep up with the same numbers this year, we could be up to around 12,000 to 14,000," he said.

Deep South cousins of the guppy, "mosquito fish" have long been a mosquito control tool for keeping abandoned pools from becoming mosquito farms.

For years, Townsend's department could collect enough of the fish from a local wastewater plant pond where they were seeded years ago to use in abandoned swimming pools. This year, he said the department expects to buy 250,000 to 300,000 of the minnow-sized fish.

"We kind of fished them out," he said.

He wasn't among the nearly 900 professionals at the American Mosquito Control Association's meeting in New Orleans in April. Budget cuts prevented it.