City avoiding pesticide spraying Park Slope,Manhattan, more.

cat

I am one of the believers that they are avoiding pesticide spraying in certain areas and only spray where they feel they will get less resistance. The bigger issue is that there is apparently no rhyme or reason to where they are spraying these toxic chemicals. Each year, the City of New York gives less and less information and now uses the beautifully vague term "to reduce West Nile Virus Activity" as the "reason" for why and where they are spraying.

Where is the press on this? The press has been much too lax in following this or noticing that the so-called criteria has gotten vaguer and vaguer over the years.

On August 9th, Community Board 6, which covers Park Slope, announced that (again, the very vague term is used) "West Nile Virus Activity" was found in zip code 11215(Park Slope). YET NO SPRAYING! However, poor Greenwood Cemetery with its wonderful wildlife and dragonflies (which EAT large amounts of mosquitoes!) is being sprayed.

They do not say what this "West Nile Virus Activity" is based on --
they used to specify ... infected mosquito pools and/or
infected birds. They have not given any information like this in the
past two years.

I would like to find out what "West Nile Virus activity" means and why
they have made their terminology more vague
in the last two years. (although I can certainly guess -- I'd like to
hear the "official" reason.)

Also, mosquitoes do not go outside of a certain radius in their lifetimes. The Department of Health used to say that they will spray within a 2 mile radius -- which was always considered TOO large by mosquito experts. However, now they don't even say what the radius is. What is wrong with this picture??

Cat.

******** this was the old alert
which was posted here on Brooklynian: ***************

Greetings!

The Department of Health advises us that West Nile Virus activity has
been detected in 11214 and 11215.

A flyer from the DOHMH has been added to our website as a download at
the following link:
http://www.brooklyncb6.org/announcements/

(note from Cat: This has since been revised so you won't get the original one from august 9th.)

Feel free to circulate.

Please be advised of the following:

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West Nile Virus activity detected recently in the following Brooklyn
zip codes: 11214 and 11215