The West Nile Virus reached its peak activity in Lancaster County around 2004, according to Matt Mercer, who serves as the county’s West Nile coordinator. And, just as the presence of a virus can often cycle through the body of an individual, area outbreaks tend to follow a seven-year cycle. In the next couple of years, Mercer concluded, the virus will either continue to recede or suddenly resurge in Lancaster County.
Using about $80,000 of state funding, the Lancaster County Cooperative Extension will continue to serve the county in 2010 with its West Nile Virus control program, which consists of public education initiatives, viral trend surveillance, and strategic mosquito control.
The Lancaster County commissioners voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve the receipt of those funds from the Pennsylvania department of environmental protection, vector management.
In 2009, the county’s control program detected 33 West Nile-positive mosquito pools, exterminated 416 infected areas with a larvicide treatment, and collected a program record of 1,400 samples, including 60 new sites.
The collection of such samples, Mercer told NewsLanc, is the program’s foremost preventative strategy. “Surveillance is a proactive way to identify where the virus is,” Mercer said, “That’s how we try to stay on top of it, as opposed to finding out that people have it or a horse has it.”
In Lancaster County last year there were no reported cases of West Nile in humans or horses.
The distribution of these preventative surveillance efforts, however, will have to be “prioritized” for 2010, Mercer said, as a result of a 26% budget cut from Harrisburg. With one of the program’s seasonal technicians now cut, the entire operation covering all 969 square miles of Lancaster County will be run by Mercer and one other technician.
According to Mercer, “In that sense, we’re going to have to reduce our scope of work and focus on past virus-active sites as well as sites that we know are nuisance areas and can breed enormous populations of mosquitoes.”
One particular type of mosquito that the program will be keeping close watch over is known as the Asian Tiger. This mosquito, according to Mercer, has the potential to spread West Nile along with a number of other diseases and, most disconcertingly, “They love urban habitats.” No Asian Tiger mosquitoes have yet been collected in rural parts of the county, due to the lack of artificial spaces which attract these pests: “Rain gutters, buckets—you name it, and they find and use it to breed.”
County selects designer for energy projects
Also on Wednesday, the commissioners approved a contract with Buchart Horn, Inc. of York, PA, to provide design and construction phase services for the following two energy conservation projects in the county: 1) At the County’s Public Safety Training Center, a system of solar panels will ultimately be integrated with the existing emergency generator system to supplement the usage of electricity; and 2) the Lancaster County Environmental Center will ultimately receive lighting upgrades, a solar power system, and a geothermal heating pump.
Buchart Horn’s services for the first project will cost the county a total of $40,100; the second will cost $61,350.
County facilities project manager Barry Garman could not yet estimate a likely cost for either of the final projects, which will be paid for by federal energy efficiency block grants.
