City of Sioux Falls uses Permanone for mosquito spraying

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Let’s just say after reading this in a city press release I decided to do a little research;

The City will be using the product Permanone for spray treatments. Products used by the City of Sioux Falls are designed to break down in the environment quickly and are used at very low concentrations. Permanone is a product approved for use by the EPA in residential areas for adult mosquito control.

Sounds harmless, right? Unless you are a small animal, get it on your skin, fish or bees or a vegetable garden or have chickens. Here’s some fun facts about this poison they are spreading throughout the city;

This pesticide is extremely toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates. Runoff from treated areas or deposition of spray droplets into a body of water may be hazardous to fish and aquatic invertebrates. Do not apply over bodies of water (lakes, rivers, permanent streams, natural ponds, commercial fish ponds, swamps, marshes or estuaries), except when necessary to target areas where adult mosquitoes are present, and weather conditions will facilitate movement of applied material away from the water in order to minimize incidental deposition into the water body. Do not contaminate water when disposing of equipment wash waters.

This pesticide is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment on blooming crops or weeds. Do not apply this product or allow drift when bees are actively visiting the treatment area, except when applications are made to prevent or control a threat to public and/or animal health determined by a state, tribal or local health or vector control agency on the basis of documented evidence of disease causing agents in vector mosquitoes, or the occurrence of mosquito-borne disease in animal or human populations, or if specifically approved by the state or tribe during a natural disaster recovery effort. Applications should be timed to provide the maximum possible interval between treatment and the next period of bee activity.

Do not use, pour, spill or store near heat or open flame.

Do not allow spray treatment to drift onto pastureland, cropland, poultry ranges or potable water supplies. Do not use on crops for food forage or pasture. In treatment of corrals, feed lots, swine lots, and zoos, cover any exposed drinking water, drinking water fountains and animal feed before application.

I guess we got our answer to what the city is using to kill skeeters, but what other harm is it causing?

 

Posted in: Public Utilities, Public Works, Sioux Falls

Is mosquito spraying in Sioux Falls killing bees, beneficial bugs and driving songbirds away?

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I guess I haven’t really thought about it much until the past couple of days as people have pointed out to me that they haven’t seen many honey bees or beneficial bugs. I have several wild flower pots in my backyard, and I have only noticed one bumble bee so far this summer, and no honey bees. There are products that can be used that don’t affect the honey bees and beneficial bugs, and different application practices (avoid aerial and spraying during the day) this product uses a bacteria that kills mosquitos;

“Bti”, Bacillus thuringienis ssp. israelensis, are bacteria which infect and kill mosquito larvae. These bacteria are highly selective, killing only mosquitoes and their close relatives like gnats and black flies. Formulations of Bti will only kill these types of insects and do not harm other kinds of insects, fish, birds, worms or mammals.

– Bti is harmless to other wildlife

– Easy to apply!

– Effective within 24 hours.

– May be applied pre-flood.

When Bti are eaten by the mosquito larvae, they damage the gut cells and quickly paralyze them, then kill the larvae quickly and efficiently. A moderate to heavy dose has been shown to reduce the mosquito population by one half in 15 minutes and the rest within one hour.

Using non-biological insecticides have proven to kill honey bees;

Problems may arise if these insecticides come into contact with honey bees. Honey bees are susceptible to many insecticides, and in fact pesticides are a major cause of honey bee deaths.

Public awareness of the importance of honey bees is growing. Besides providing the beeswax, honey, propolis, bee pollen and royal jelly that are the basis for countless businesses, honey bees are essential for producing a substantial portion of our agricultural crops. As pollinators, honey bees are unsurpassed in their service to farmers producing fruits and vegetables such as apples, cucumbers, squash, melons, blueberries, pears, etc. Without a large and steady supply of bee colonies, commercial growers would not be able to produce these crops, and their businesses would fail.

As for the beneficial insects, it may be affecting them also;

With the threat of new emerging infectious diseases in the United States (West Nile virus, Malaria, Dengue), the clamor for novel personal protection/vector control devices has increased significantly over recent years. The two new tactics that have been introduced for controlling disease-carrying insects in a residential setting consist of fogging the vegetation surrounding the home withlong-lasting insecticides and the installation of residential misting systems that spray the desired area with aninsecticide on a daily basis. There have been some preliminary studies conducted that show that these tactics can have some effect on the mosquito populations in the backyard setting. However, these new control tactics and devices may have an adverse effect on the beneficial insects providing natural biological control of pest species in the areas subjected to the chemical treatments.

Beneficial insects include all the organisms that occur in the environment (may be augmented by the homeowner) that help to keep pest arthropod populations low, pollinate various plant species, and prevent major damage to backyard landscaping.

Some of those beneficial bugs are Lady Bugs, Spiders, Preying Mantids, Assassin Bugs, Ambush Bugs, Thread-Legged Bugs, and Ground Beetles.

As for songbirds disappearing, I am only speculating they are not around because their favorite food is mosquitos, flies and gnats.

Not sure what kind of product the city is currently using, but there are numerous other biologically safe ways to kill the mosquitos and save the bees and beneficial bugs.

Posted in: Public Works, Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

My public testimony about skeeter spraying poo-pood

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Apparently there was a city email sent out to certain city departments about my comments last Tuesday during city council public testimony about the use of the Bayer pesticide Permanone. They were told that I basically wasn’t sharing the facts. First they claimed that the product was safe in low concentrations and when used properly, here is Bayer’s label, you determine how safe this stuff is.

While this is probably true, with any chemical, what is considered a ‘safe concentration’?

The email also said that Permanone is a pyrethroid that is made from Chrysanthemum derivatives. Yes, it is, SYNTHETIC derivatives (in other words a chemical rendition of a natural product) It’s kind of like saying they use real sour cream and onions in sour cream and onion potato chips. See, you can’t patent the makeup of natural plants unless you make a chemical synthetic makeup, and once you have a patent, BAM, the cashola rolls in. One of the main reasons there has been resistance to marijuana as medicine.

They also had an issue with me saying a natural alternative, BTI, a nasty little bacteria that eats larvae cannot be sprayed. It can;

If the pests persist, you can find BTI formulas in granular and spray form. 

While I’m sure Permanone is safe in low concentrations and approved by the EPA, I am just not a fan of chemicals being sprayed all over the city because people are too dumb to protect themselves from mosquitos and using a little common sense when it comes to prevention. I also see that several high ranking managers and city directors have nothing better to do with their 6-figure salary time but to send out propaganda trying to disseminate my claims. I wish the Health Director would go back to doing more productive things, like handing out free condoms, because abortions are soon to get real expensive once congress cuts off funding to Planned Parenthood. And we are worried about West Nile. Geez.

MY ORIGINAL POST.

Posted in: Sioux Falls

Belfrage helping to spread misinformation about bee keeping ordinance

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Trust me, I realize that the Belfrage show is just ‘talk’ and NOT news, in fact I would go so far to say it is the epitome of fake news. Day after day his moronic audience calls in defending a president that has taken the constitution and wiped his butt with it. So it is NO surprise his ignorant listeners would call in and agree with him on saying a bee keeping ordinance is a bad thing.

If you watch the city council informational meeting at the end of this article, you will see many questions answered by a person who educates people on bee keeping. So let’s look at some FACTS that Greg’s listeners chose to ignore;

• Bees already exist in Sioux Falls, and there is a lot of them. In fact it has taken me about 3 years to get my flower beds built up in my backyard to where they are almost all completely full of cover. I had tons of bees this summer in my backyard. Never got stung. In fact I ran into them accidentally quite a bit, and they just flew away. When a bee stings it commits suicide, once the stinger is left in your body it pulls their guts out killing them.

• Most people who get stung in the city are stung by wasps and hornets. They have a stinger that detaches from them without killing them, so they have no problem with stinging people.

• Bees are essential for vegetables and flowers. How do you think people in the city grow flowers and gardens without bees? They don’t, bees are already here working hard.

• Bee keepers will be required to be licensed, take a course and get neighbors permission. They approximate that about 5-10 people will apply for the license if this ordinance passes. The hives will also have to be limited in size. In other words, they won’t have massive bee farms. People will mostly have the hives for personal honey use and their own gardens. While bees will travel 2-3 miles to pollinate, most likely they won’t go far if they don’t have to.

• People are allergic to bee stings. I get it, people are also allergic to peanuts. Should we ban peanuts in Sioux Falls? If you are allergic to something you take some personal responsibility for that.

• Mosquito spraying is more harmful then bees. The chemical compounds that the city uses to spray actually kills bees and butterflies and many other beneficial insects in our city. In fact, one of the reasons I don’t have a garden is because those compounds are most likely leaving a residue on your vegetables that can’t be washed away, and if young children eat those vegetables it can have an affect on their nervous system. I have told the city on numerous occasions they need to use a ecological safe organic spray on mosquitos instead. There is an organic compound out there right now that can be put into standing water like drainage ponds that kills larvae.

Once again, many people are saying the ‘sky is falling’ and I’m not sure this ordinance will pass. In the video below you will notice that Neitzert and Erickson were gunning against it. You will also notice that NO ONE came to public input in opposition to this. If it gets a reading, I suspect there will only be one or two people opposed to it at the regular council meeting.

Without bees we don’t eat, and if we don’t eat, we die folks. Grow a brain.

Posted in: SF City Council, Sioux Falls

Well this isn’t good . . . Firefighting foam in Sioux Falls drinking water

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So while it is a good thing the wells were turned off, makes you wonder how long we were drinking this crap before they found it;

Important questions about today’s PFAS contamination remain unanswered. From the date PFAS entered a private well or municipal water system to the date it was detected and mitigated, what was the effect and on whom? How many airmen and women handled and used the foam for decades without proper protection? What was the effect and where are they now?

Lubbers and Stefanich balked at addressing those questions. Bak simply stated, “You can’t really speak to what was in the past.”

Reminds me of when I warned the city about this a few years ago, and I think they changed some of the chemical mixture. But I often advise people to NOT eat the vegetables you grow in an outside garden in Sioux Falls because it is covered with dangerous mosquito spray residuals. ever notice we don’t have as many bees and beneficial insects? That’s because the mosquito spraying is killing them.

There’s a lot of chemicals our government is feeding us, that they do NOT want us to know about. Yet all the conservatives want more deregulation when it comes to the EPA. Idiots.

Posted in: Public Utilities, Public Works, Sioux Falls