Mosquitos in Edmonton

Mosquitos in Edmonton

You have likely seen the news that City Council voted to remove the aerial mosquito spraying program. I wanted to share how I voted on this and what happens next.

To clarify, the City of Edmonton will still be doing mosquito control on the ground. Council’s vote this week was only for aerial helicopter spraying.

When the original motion was put forward to stop the aerial spraying program, Councillor Tim Cartmell made an amendment to the main motion that would have delayed the implementation of that change to 2023. Over the next year, further research would have been completed to determine what the best way is to help address mosquitos each year. I supported that amendment but it was defeated in a 5-8 vote.

The reason I supported waiting until 2023 is because I felt we needed to have a clear transition plan and a way to measure progress. While it’s fair to say that we don’t currently have a great way to measure the effectiveness of the aerial program, I’d rather wait to develop a good evaluation process prior to removing a specific tool.

Although I supported the amendment to wait a year to make any changes, I did support the motion to stop the aerial spraying program. You might be asking how those two different positions make sense. The reason I supported the motion after the amendment failed is because the motion to remove the aerial program included shifting that funding to other alternatives.

At the moment, there is no way to know if those alternatives will be more or less effective than the aerial program but in my mind it made more sense to at least fund some alternatives than not use that funding at all. I hope we don’t see a bad mosquito year but we need to continue to evaluate our actions to help inform any future actions.

I hope this helps give you a better understanding of how I approached this issue. If you have any questions or feedback, please share those in the comments.