GUEST COMMENTARY

Response to Goodman

BY STEVE MURRAY-SMITH

As Chairman and an 18+ year elected commissioner at Florida Keys Mosquito Control, I would like to set the record straight on statements made by Phil Goodman and published in your paper on Aug. 7.   Our focus is to keep the mosquito population at a minimum which is labor intensive, but necessary to protect the health of our residents and visitors.

When Gov. Scott appointed Goodman to the FKMCD board, there was not “waste and corruption.” Changes we made years ago in the control or larvae reducing adult mosquitos resulted in savings of millions of tax dollars and reduced the use of adulticides (pesticides) by approximately 80% while reducing the biting vectors.   We have entomologists and biologists constantly monitoring the efficacy of our program.

I doubt we are the “largest user of chemicals in the county.” We do NOT have “hundreds of missions spraying tons of pesticides over the Keys and the National Marine Sanctuary.” We average 60 adulticide and 130 larvicide missions annually. Adulticiding uses less than an ounce per acre, is highly regulated, and not sprayed over the NMS. Bti, a naturally occurring bacteria, is used to control mosquito larvae. We use about 4.8 tons of Bti over land annually, however this is harmless to humans, pets, fish; only targeting mosquito larvae; we do not disperse Bti over the open NMS waters.

Mosquito commissioners can attend educational programs to learn what we use, why we use it, and how our entomologists, staff and the state work toward better mosquito control in our districts while protecting the environment. If he attended these he would know we do not treat open waters with adulticides or Bti.

Last month’s budget-limiting vote by Goodman, Bridges and Cranny-Gage was contrary to the advise of director Doyle and our comptroller, and most likely will cause a shortfall in the upcoming years.

Commissioner Shaw and I opposed this unnecessary limitation so early in the crafting of our 2014-2015 annual budget with 2.5 months of heavy mosquito control before our current fiscal year ends.  We need proper staffing and budget to continue our work; we do not need to keep cutting the budget to the point we can no longer effectively do our job.

This labor intensive battle takes manpower and an adequate budget which is now unnecessarily strained.

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