Pest control department meets tall order controlling small disease vectors

During the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Orleans Mosquito, Termite and Rodent Control Board had a crucial routine — feeding the rats of the French Quarter.

While the shutdown of restaurants and bars had the rat population on the ropes, the personnel in charge of controlling pests knew that a failure to keep the rats’ routine intact could mean a massive migration into residential areas throughout Orleans Parish, La. and opening a whole new can of worms.

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NACo Annual Conference attendees had a chance to see how the department handles pests that could easily spread disease, particularly in a hospitality and port city that brings in visitors, and sometimes stowaways, from all over the world. Monday will offer a second tour of the Mosquito, Termite and Rodent Control Board, tentatively scheduled to leave at 2:30 p.m. from the convention center.

Paid for by the city and parish’s general fund, the department has made substantial investments that allow it to better fight the spread of disease. While accepting free genetic analysis at Louisiana State University might seem like a no-brainer, doing in-house testing of mosquitos has a distinct advantage when looking for West Nile, Eastern Equine Encephalitis and St. Louis Encephalitis.

“If we set traps Monday, pick them up Tuesday, we have our answers by lunchtime Wednesday,” said Assistant Director Carrie Cottone. “If we sent them away, we’d get our results on Friday. That’s 72 additional hours when infected mosquitoes are potentially biting and infecting people.”

It also saves overtime costs if results on a Friday require a heavy spraying response. 

A helicopter allows for precision spraying for adult mosquitos and larvae, and a GIS mapping program allows the department to track its chemical usage. 

“Our inspectors have tablets in their vehicles and every one of these dots, red and green, that’s where we’ve seen a water issue — whether it’s construction, waste tires, abandoned pools, fountains, natural divots in the ground that hold water,” said entomologist Alexandros Pavlakis. “The important part isn’t that we track it and know it, but we also report this to other agencies — water board, sanitation, code enforcement — so we can get that information and get those priority issues dealt with rather than just going back and using chemicals.”

The department’s annual NOLA Bugfest offers fun and educational activities for children and a chance to have serious conversations with parents.

“It’s a chance to ask if they have a termite contact on their house, why that’s important and if they’ve looked through their yard to see if they have any standing water collecting in their kids’ toys,” Cottone said. 

As for the rats of the French Quarter, once business resumed as the pandemic receded, so did their population. But when the rest of the world was dealing with plenty, a rat invasion wasn’t part of it.