Commissioners approve mill for mosquito eradication

The Hot Springs County Commissioners covered a lot of ground at their meeting on Tuesday, including a report from Youth Alternatives Director Barb Rice, information on replacing the floor in the fair building and a request from the Weed and Pest District for mosquito intervention for the season.

Rice told the commissioners there are currently seven youth in the program and she has been coordinating community service projects for them each week

Most of the students in the program are required by the judge to do some sort of community service. The latest project was helping with the painting of Monument Hill this past Saturday.

Rice is also looking into a wellness program for the students through the Gottsche Wellness Center.

Her hope is to be able to get a couple of memberships for the program that can be used by the students on an alternating basis, a way to help the students with their overall health as well as helping them with their court-based issues.

For a few months the commissioners have been looking at replacing the cement floor in the fair building as well as other alternatives to tearing the entire thing out.

There are places in the floor that are heaving, causing raised areas of the concrete that could be hazardous.

An engineer has looked at the problem from all angles and has determined the problem is due in part to a small retaining wall behind the building.

Apparently, runoff from rain moves around the edges of the retaining wall, heading straight for the fair building, allowing all the water to run under the building. This has caused the dirt beneath the floor to become like mush, creating the heaving and dipping of the cement.

The thought now is to replace the retaining wall to allow the water to go somewhere other than right under the fair building. In addition, the engineer suggests letting things sit for a year to let the soil beneath the floor to dry out, hoping that will allow the floor to settle back into place. Then all that will need to be done is a grinding of the floor’s edges to make it level again.

Originally, SLIB monies had been set aside for the project, but at the time it was for replacement of the entire floor.

County Clerk Nina Weber is going to check into what the process is to get the project revised to the current suggestion.

Weed and Pest approached the commissioners for an additional mill levy to cover mosquito control for the summer.

The district runs a very aggressive mosquito program each year, working on the ground to spray any standing water that might harbor eggs or larvae, then moving to aerial spraying when the population gets to a certain level.

Last year, for the first time, the district used a fogger to spray within the town limits. In the past it would take an average of three days to spray the town, but renting the fogger allowed them to do it in a single night.

Hot Springs County has been fortunate not to have a single case of West Nile virus for the past nine years.

Traps are set out in several areas, especially in the Lucerne area where mosquitoes tend to be thickest, and are collected and sent to a lab for testing each week. There have been no positive West Nile mosquitoes for almost a decade.

Using larvaecides and varying the chemicals used against mosquitoes has been an effective pro-active measure to keep citizens protected.

The commissioners approved the additional mill to be used for this summer’s mosquito program.