An Emergency Round Of Mosquito Spraying, After Susquehanna Flooding

• Scott Detrow
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  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

The impacts of last week’s flooding range from the monumental – millions, if not billions, of dollars in damage – to the near-microscopic.
The stagnant, standing water the Susquehanna River and its tributaries left in central Pennsylvania communities serves as an ideal mosquito breeding ground, so the Department of Environmental Protection will “conduct emergency mosquito control operations” in 18 counties.
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The Department of Environmental Protection announced today it will begin conducting emergency mosquito control operations in 18 counties affected by flooding.

The 18 counties are Adams, Bradford, Columbia, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Luzerne, Lycoming, Montour, Northumberland, Perry, Snyder, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Union, Wyoming and York.
The department will conduct truck-mounted and aerial sprayings, targeting  larvae and adult mosquitoes. Floodwaters and heavy rains have created breeding grounds for the insects, leading to a dramatic rise in mosquito populations across the north-central, north-east and south-central regions of the state.  
“DEP is responding quickly and aggressively to abate the mosquitoes,” DEP Secretary Mike Krancer said. “In addition to being a nuisance, some species of adult mosquitoes can carry West Nile virus. These operations will help protect public health as Pennsylvanians recover from this disaster.”

The mosquito spraying is just one of many ways DEP has responded to the flooding. The department is also offering energy loans to homeowners replacing broken appliances.
 

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