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BOARD OF CHOSEN FREEHOLDERS
ESSEX COUNTY, NEW JERSEY
MOSQUITO CONTROL COMMITTEE
:
MOSQUITO CONTROL : TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDED
COMMITTEE MEETING : PROCEEDINGS
:
Town Hall
West Caldwell, New Jersey
October 1, 2001
Commencing at 7:15 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT:
JAMES R. PAGANELLI
PATRICIA SEBOLD
JOSEPH N. DiVINCENZO, JR., President, Chairperson
MEMBERS ABSENT:
JOSEPH P. SCARPELLI
ALSO PRESENT:
RONALD H. MANZELLA, Acting County Administrator
COLEEN D’ALESSANDRO, Assistant County Administrator
LARRY FERCHAK, General Supervisor, Department of
Public Works, Division of Roads & Bridges
ROBERT KENT, Administrator, New Jersey Department of
Environmental Protection, Office of Mosquito
Control and Coordination
AARON RAPPAPORT, Chairman, New Jersey Mosquito
Control Commission
I N D E X
PAGE
Call to Order 3
Presentation by Administration 8
Public Comment Session 35
Adjournment 78
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PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Okay, we’re going to start.
First of all, I’d like to welcome everyone here to our Mosquito Control Committee Meeting. I’d like to --
Freeholder Sebold just walked in to the right.
Bob Kent from New Jersey DEP. I want to thank Bob.
Aaron Rappaport, from New Jersey Mosquito Commission. I want to thank you for being here.
And also, to the Administration.
At this time, I’d like to call on Councilman Joe Fischer to give a welcome on behalf of West Caldwell.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: I always see people come up and rap this, so I figured I’d better rap it. I didn’t realize it was on.
On behalf of the Mayor and the members of the Council, we just want to welcome the Committee and Ron and Larry. We’re really pleased with what’s happening. We’re getting constant feedback from the people in the Township, particularly those that were really impacted by the mosquitoes during the middle part of the summer.
I find, myself, whenever I was running into anybody towards the end of the summer, would ask them how things were going and they were ecstatic. They were able to go out into their backyards and have picnics and use their pools and so forth. So we’re really pleased with what’s happening with the Committee and all the people, you know, both on the county level and the local level, what’s happening here.
And we look forward to what’s been started, to be continued on, and when we get into the spring and summer of next year to find that the number of mosquitoes is down to one per trap, as Larry would say.
So, welcome aboard. Thanks very much.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Thank you, Councilman.
Freeholder Paganelli is present.
Councilman Fischer, our next meeting is going to be -- we’d like to have it here on November 12th.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: Fine.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Now, for some reason that if this fall is not able with -- we’ll go someone else but the next meeting is going to be on November 12th. So, we would like you to host us once again.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: Thanks. You’re welcome here -- as long as there’s mosquitoes here, you’re welcome to come.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: The reason I feel it’s so important for us to continue meeting is so that we’re prepared come springtime. All right? And for us to stay on top.
This is much too serious of an issue for us to -- because you mentioned to me prior that Mayor Tempesta said, let’s meet in March. And it was also --
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: Yes. It was the Mayor’s thought that -- and he had gotten some feedback from some of the people in town -- that they didn’t know whether it was necessary to meet on a regular basis during the winter months but that they wanted to see the work that was started continue on through the winter months. But the Committee might have been postponed until probably the beginning of March.
But, you know, he said he would rather have them meet on a regular basis, which is fine.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: This Committee is going to have to make sure we never get into a situation that we have had before.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: Right.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: It’s going to be a very hands-on approach. So come March, all right, we don’t have the same problem that occurred this particular year. All right?
And if I am here along with the other Freeholders, we are going to -- we’ll have the meeting; we’ll conduct it. All right? Because it’s too important of an issue.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: Sure. Okay.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: All right?
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: November 12th?
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: November 12th.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: You got it.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: At seven o’clock.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: Okay.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: You have to also understand what we do is, after the meetings, we also send letters to everyone that participated in our meetings. And you’re going to continue to get mailings and stuff to let you know what’s coming, going on and updates.
Last Wednesday we had a -- you know I’ve been going on these park tours through the parks and there’s certain recommendations that I made to the Administration. And we had a report from the Administration -- was not too good of a report as far as hiring people. All right? And what we’re going to do now is every Wednesday we’re going to make sure that the Administration, what they committed to do with us, that they hire the people necessary to maintain our parks.
Tonight we had a Parks meeting. We had over 30 people there at a Parks meeting. And they were a little disappointed because with the Administration this Board committed that every park would have a park crew maintain their parks. And knowing that the Administration did not fulfill their obligation -- and they plan on fulfilling it because they are in the midst of hiring the people. But the people were quite disappointed tonight and we have to let their voices be heard.
And I’m not going to let this issue go by. It’s going to be met. And if I’m the only one here with my colleagues, we’re going to continue to be here to make sure we follow through the job that we said we were going to do.
COUNCILMAN FISCHER: Fine.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Okay?
All right. At this time, I want to call on Mr. Manzella to give us an update of the hiring and whatever information they could help us with.
MR. MANZELLA: Mr. President, I and the Board members and Mr. Kent and Mr. Rappaport, are very happy to bring tonight a young woman who is a newly employed Essex County employee. She is our full time biologist and I’d like the Director of that environmental section to introduce her. She’s just recently brought on board. She’s taking additional classes and she’ll be enrolled in an advanced class in January along with her co-worker who will come on in the end of the December. And we believe this is a fine young pair of individuals, bright, right out of school and looking to really be aggressive in the field of mosquito management.
Mr. Ferchak?
MR. FERCHAK: At this time, I’d like to introduce Manjula Chava. She’s our biologist who has just started with us three weeks ago. She is a graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in biology -- Bachelor of Science degree in biology. She’s been, like I said, with us for three weeks. She’s a quick learner. She’s doing a great job with us. We’ve given her some basic courses in identifying mosquitoes.
She’s currently with myself and Bill Evans, Chief Inspector. We’re attending Dr. Crans’ medical entomology course on Tuesday nights. And as Ron said, in January she will be going for the more extensive course in mosquito recognition and identification.
She, as far I’m concerned, she’s done excellent work so far in the three weeks that she’s been with us and she’s going to be a very good asset to our organization.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Do you have anything you want to add?
MS. CHAVA: No, that’s about it.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: That’s about it.
MR. MANZELLA: Freeholders unless anyone has a specific question, --
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: We’re happy to have you by the way. You’ve only been here three weeks, so we won’t put you on any spot. All right?
MS. CHAVA: All right.
MR. MANZELLA: I ask for you indulgence, if she could leave? She has a ride in front of her, she has to attend to some other business. Unless there’s a question?
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: The experts have any questions for her?
MR. KENT: No.
MR. RAPPAPORT: No, she comes from a good school and she should know something about mosquitoes.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Great.
We’ll see you at our next meeting.
MS. CHAVA: All right, thank you.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: All right.
MR. FERCHAK: See you tomorrow. Thank you for coming.
MS. CHAVA: Thank you.
MR. MANZELLA: What I’d like to do today, Mr. President, is twofold.
One, I would like Larry to update you on what activities have taken place prior -- I mean in the interim, between the last time we gathered and tonight.
And also for him to lay out what the activities from October 15th through February 18th would be involving water management and the deployment of staff. At some point, all staff will be working on the water management system.
The operators -- the six heavy-duty mechanical operators and will be assisted by all the inspectors to do some of the manual work. They’ll be divided into teams and Larry is putting together rather extensive month by month plan of attack, street by street, area by area.
He has a letter that will be going out to residents in those areas just letting them know we’re going to be doing work, making sure that we have their permission to go, if there’s a stream behind it, to work on the mosquito control.
And without further ado, I’d like to give his two-part report.
MR. FERCHAK: Okay, first of all, to continue with what Ron’s talking about, the water management, --
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Do you have anything in writing that you could -- what you’re going to be talking about tonight too, so that we could present it to the people that are not here too or what?
Or we’ll just have to get the transcripts?
MR. MANZELLA: Best I can do is ask Larry to commit his notes to a report and I’ll forward it through the Clerk --
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: That’s fine.
MR. MANZELLA: -- to you.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: That’s fine.
MR. FERCHAK: Okay.
I’d like to continue with the water management aspect of what we’ve been doing. Our project --
A CITIZEN: Talk louder please, Larry.
MR. FERCHAK: Okay.
PRESIDENT DiVINCENZO: Use the microphone there, Larry.
MR. FERCHAK: Our water management projects we’ve been moving at a great pace out in the West Caldwell Meadows, in the Hatfield Meadow.
We have already been able to alleviate the dams in the Crane’s Brook from the power lines road to the river. The brook is now back in a free-flow condition. We’re working on side ditches out there, feeder ditches, that come off the brook.
In fact, back -- I took an inspection after we had about two inches of rain in the middle of September and actually there was no water in that meadow. In the past, we did have water out there. It did drain off, so that’s really a plus out there in the work that’s been accomplished so far.
As far as the manual work, we should be starting on October 15th with manual work in Fairfield/West Caldwell. We’ll probably be doing -- I mean Livingston, Roseland -- we’re going right along the line. And we have picked out about five or six locations in each town to start on. Ones that are really badly blocked and we’re getting a lot of mosquitoes out of. And we’ll be going out there doing the manual work.
I have a letter that we’ve submitted to the residents so that we’d have permission to go on their property. In fact, since then we have -- our senior inspectors have been out talking to the public and most people are really encouraged to hear that we’ll be coming out to do this work and we’ve got verbal permission to actually start this work but we have a letter that is going out now to get something in writing from them just to make sure that everything is okay.
Our water management, like I say, we’ve done a great deal of work in a short amount of time. There’s more to do. I mean the projects are moving along very well and that aspect of our program is really going great.
If I could address something else, I’d like to talk about, we have -- in Essex County we’ve had six positive mosquitoes -- tested positive for West Nile virus. Four of them were in Cedar Grove and two were in East Orange.
The four were at the Cedar Grove Nursery on Route 23. I got a -- from Bob Kent’s office on August 31st about the positive mosquitoes that were found in Cedar Grove. I immediately -- after receiving this information I gave Mr. Tucci, the Town Manager, a call and what plan of action we wanted to take.
On the night of the 31st we did a ground adulticide spraying of the one-mile area of the nursery. We also talked to the Health Department, the Police Department and all citizens that lived in Cedar Grove that are on our notification list.
I came back on Sunday and put a trap up and collected on Monday, there were no mosquitoes in that trap. And we followed up -- Rutgers has been up in the meantime. We’ve been submitting more pools of mosquitoes in that area; we haven’t gotten the results.
We also met with the Health Department and the owner of the nursery and asked him to do some corrective measures on his property. He had a lot of containers that were holding water. He has since turned them over and he has cooperated a hundred percent with us on that endeavor.