Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays the front yard area while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, empties standing water full of mosquito larva from a potted plant after spraying a yard for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mosquito can lay thousands of larva in area’s of standing water.
Mosquito larva, found in standing water of a potted plant, found by the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control team as they sprayed yards on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mosquito can lay thousands of larva in area’s of standing water.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays around a wet area of a yard while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays a yard while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays around a porch while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays around a yard while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays the front yard area while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays the front yard area while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, empties standing water full of mosquito larva from a potted plant after spraying a yard for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mosquito can lay thousands of larva in area’s of standing water.
Mosquito larva, found in standing water of a potted plant, found by the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control team as they sprayed yards on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mosquito can lay thousands of larva in area’s of standing water.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays around a wet area of a yard while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays a yard while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays around a porch while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays around a yard while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Harold Grier, Inspector 1, sprays the front yard area while working for the East Baton Rouge’s Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control on Friday, August 26, 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Donning a respirator, knee-high boots and a backpack fogger, Harold Grier sets off for battle in yards of Baton Rouge as part of a never-ending war against a tiny, but mighty, pest — the mosquito.
Grier’s fogger, a piece of equipment resembling a leaf blower, unleashes a cloud of Fyfanon around the property. The insecticide, which dissipates quickly into the atmosphere to prevent harm to humans, drops dozens of flying bloodsuckers out searching for their next meal on Friday morning.
Grier then turns his attention to the larvae — treating pots, tires and other containers filled with standing water that make perfect homes for fledgling mosquitoes — suffocating them before they can sprout wings and fly.
“I was interested in science and really wanted to be a public servant,” said Grier, an inspector for East Baton Rouge Parish's Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control. “When I do my job, it’s a gratifying job, it’s a job I can feel good about because I’m helping people improve their quality of life.”
The house calls made by field supervisor Marcus Goss’ team of just over a dozen inspectors are just one small part of the agency’s operations across East Baton Rouge Parish.
The agency sprays neighborhoods and septic ditches using red pickup trucks and treats swaths of woodlands and fields by plane. Its employees conduct research from MARC’s headquarters off Veterans Memorial Boulevard near the airport.
For his own part, Goss even pilots a state-of-the-art drone that can access hard-to-reach areas for treatment.
“It’s a health factor, as well as being able to come into your yard and enjoy the outside. You want to be able to enjoy your property … and you can’t do that if mosquitoes are always bugging you,” said Goss, a 49-year-old who served in the Navy and moved his way up from an inspector over the course of 12 years.
The agency funds its operations using property taxes that brought in a little over $8 million in 2021, according to a city-parish audit. Most of that is made up from a 1.23 mill, 10-year tax that will be before voters in the parish for renewal on Nov. 8.
The 1.23 mill rate would cost a property owner $12.30 for land assessed at $10,000 in value, a cost Assistant Director Randy Vaeth compared with buying two bottles of bug repellent annually.
Voters have consistently approved taxes to fund mosquito and rodent control in the parish since the public agency was created in 1979.
“Louisiana is last on almost everything, but mosquito programs here are some of the best in the world,” Vaeth said. “In Baton Rouge, we’re right up there, too, and we feel really good about that. The way you create excellence is you hire the right people and you fund the program.”
West Nile Virus is confirmed to have killed six people across the U.S. in 2022, including two people in Louisiana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three of the East Baton Rouge agency’s traps spread across the parish captured mosquitos that were confirmed to be carrying the virus on Friday, Vaeth said.
Other mosquito-borne diseases like Zika and dengue are not present in Louisiana, but the climate is ideal for the diseases to spread if they’re introduced, Vaeth said.
The agency uses its taxpayer dollars to fund a plethora of methods and research to effectively battle mosquitoes in the parish.
The red trucks often spotted driving through neighborhoods in the evenings spray a chemical that kills adult mosquitoes, and they’re often targeted to areas where the agency receives a high volume of calls or where West Nile Virus is found in nearby traps, Vaeth said. Specialized trucks treat septic ditches, which are ideal breeding grounds for mosquito larvae, with larvicide, Vaeth said.
Residents can also request an inspector like Grier to come spray their property, a service offered at no additional cost to the taxpayer. Those same inspectors even recently sprayed all of Tiger Stadium ahead of football season.
One of the most important parts of the agency’s work is public education, by explaining to residents the importance of simply dumping standing water out of containers in their yard to prevent mosquitoes from moving in, Goss said.
A drone flies patterns over hard-to-reach areas, like woodlands and flooded fields, to drop larvicide from the air after rainstorms. The agency also owns two airplanes that treat dozens of acres of land from the air, and a $4.5 million helicopter is in the process of being purchased to allow for more targeted, large-scale treatment to take place, Vaeth said.
The agency even funds a lab at its headquarters where mosquito colonies are raised in order to test which chemicals are most effective on the worst of Baton Rouge’s 47 different species of mosquitoes, Vaeth said. Over the past 22 years, four new species of mosquitoes have arrived in the parish, “undoubtedly due to a warming climate,” Vaeth added.
“Applied research directs what we do, and surveillance drives what we do,” Vaeth said. “Science is the foundation for what we do … because it can really make a difference.”
A significant part of Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control's name but an often overlooked area of its operations, is rodent control.
The agency limits itself to private residence inspections and bait distribution in order to prevent competing with commercial rodent control. But it did step in for one high-profile case of rat infestation.
A video of a massive colony of rats that moved in near a McDonald's and a Walmart at the intersection of Old Hammond Highway and Airline Highway captured national attention, and parish agency inspectors were called in by city officials to clear them out, Vaeth said.
In southeast Louisiana, mosquitoes will likely remain the center of attention for the agency.
The agency receives hundreds of calls for mosquito spraying every week, Goss said, and his inspectors don’t stop working until they’re all fulfilled.
“A lot of people don’t see the things we do,” Goss said. “We do a lot, and people don’t know it until we don’t do it.”
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