Colleyville to add more guidelines to mosquito management plan

With mosquito season around the corner, city staff is looking to make some changes to its integrated mosquito management program.

City staffed proposed changes to the plan that include more guidance on how to combat the appearance of mosquitoes containing West Nile Virus.

“All these changes are basically ways to improve our program,” City Engineer Jeremy Hutt said. “We’re always looking for ways to improve.”

One change includes adjusting the number and location of sample sites. Hutt said official plans are still in the works, but the change aims to reduce doubling up on sampling sites with neighboring municipalities and reducing the amount of testing sites from 16 to 14. The city will still have three static testing sites with the rest rotating around Colleyville.

The city also will incorporate new larvicide products. The city officially will add granular larvicide to its tool box in addition to the tabular larvicide. Hutt said the granular product is better for areas that have smaller pools of water spread out through highly vegetative areas. The city began to use granular products last year along Little Bear Creek and other heavily wooded areas.

Another change is to introduce adulticide targeted spraying after a test site shows three positive samples. In the current plan, adulticide is only sprayed if the city sees a human-case of West Nile Virus. This addition echos the actions the city took last year in reducing the amount of sites testing positive.

Last year, when areas along Little Bear Creek showed continuous positive results for the virus, the city sprayed in the city’s south side near Colleyville Nature Center, Plymouth Hills and Windview Estates, utilizing backpacks and ATVs. It also sprayed in northern part of the city near Whittier Heights.

Hutt said staff members will formally make the plan changes, which will be approved at a future City Council meeting. The city will begin sending samples to Tarrant County weekly on April 7.

This story was originally published March 24, 2015 at 11:36 AM with the headline "Colleyville to add more guidelines to mosquito management plan."