Danbury Spraying for West Nile Virus

Health and Welfare Department Director Scott Leroy said Danbury is staying on top of the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus this summer by spraying the city's catch basins roughly once a month.

"We've had a spraying program and we've been doing pretty much the same thing since 2001," Leroy said. "We put it out to bid every year."

Leroy said for a city like Danbury, one breeding ground for mosquitoes that people don't see are the city's catch basins. If water sits in there, mosquitoes lay eggs, which become larvae. The city hires a firm to spray larvaecide into the catch basins to kill the nascent mosquitoes.

Leroy said a real problem arises in a drought, oddly enough. He said in a drought, the water in a catch basin is stagnant until it dries out. On the other hand, in a rainy year, the catch basin water is constantly washed away and replaced. Larvae doesn't like that at all. The larvae grow best in stagnant water, not in rivers or streams.

Leroy said a pond or a lake has natural predators to larvae, so larvae grows best in stagnant water.

One precaution people can take at home, Leroy said, is pouring out any water people notice around the yard, such as water sitting in a pot, a wheel barrow or tire. Mosquitoes use that as breeding grounds.

"Danbury has 5,500 catch basins," said Leroy, of the "That is something that has to be taken care of."