City of Steinbach takes proactive measures to control mosquitoes

Summer is officially here, and residents may wonder what mosquito season will look like this year. 

Russ Dyck, Head of Parks and Recreation for the City of Steinbach says they have been monitoring the mosquito traps for the past few weeks, along with proactive measures being taken.  

“We do have a crew every year that works on our larviciding program. We have a couple of people all going out there checking standing water for larvae that are in the active feeding stage and applying an environmentally friendly larvicide as required based on the amount of larvae they find,” explains Dyck. “So that’s been a bit of a challenge this year in terms of we haven’t gone really two days without rain for the last month.” 

He says the rain and temperatures will play a factor in the mosquito’s hatching process. 

Dyck discusses what Steinbach residents can do to prevent mosquitoes from hatching in their yards. 

“When it’s raining this much, there’s not much you can do in terms of the landscape. But once it does stop raining, make sure your eavestroughs are clean, and our bird baths, some of these things that collect water,” he says. “Anywhere there is stagnant water is an opportunity for mosquitoes to breed. So, just trying to eliminate as many of those things that are in your yard as possible.” 

The discussion of mosquitoes may raise concern about the diseases they can carry, but Dyck says Steinbach doesn’t need to worry.  

“We haven’t had any indication that there’s any other diseases coming. The West Nile virus is always something that’s monitored by the province,” Dyck explains. “They do that in communities, including Steinbach. So, they have traps going already for the last month or so. In the last number of years, we haven’t really had any presence of that in Steinbach that we’re aware of.” 

Dyck says they have been monitoring the traps for a few weeks and have numbers similar to last year being relatively low.  

“We have a few locations around the city that we monitor a few days of the week and taking an average of those trap counts,” he says. “We were up in the 70’s and 90’s the last couple weeks which had come up from 10’s and 15’s to the weeks prior.” 

Last year’s numbers ranged in the 20’s and 30’s.  

-With files from Dave Anthony and Kenton Dyck