Los Banos Rotary Club History
MCMAD Manager Tells Of New Control Problems

Speaking at the local Rotary Club luncheon noon, Lloyd Meyers, new manager of the Merced County Mosquito Abatement District, stated that this county's mosquito problem will become more and more critical until such time as the sources are eliminated through proper drainage of surplus irrigation water.

The most prolific source of mosquitoes, he emphasized, is permanent pasture, alfalfa fields, and drainage pools at the lower ends of cotton and other row crop fields. "With more and more permanent pasture planted every year, with more and more new lands being developed, with the introduction of additional irrigation water through the Delta Mendota Canal and the promise of even more water through the proposed San Luis West Side Canal, proper and complete handling of drainage water becomes more and more necessary, not only for the control of mosquitoes, but for the continued productivity of the land itself."

Meyers, who spent several years as a drainage engineer before assuming the managership of the Abatement District, says he, the board of directors and the MCMAD and all personnel will continue the policy advocated and practiced by former manager Edgar Smith in considering drainage as the primary objective of the district's control program. "Drainage," he declared," is a common problem in this county. We are anxious to cooperate in every way with any farmer, any group of farmers, any and all toward the establishment of proper drainage systems."

Concerning the more immediate problems of mosquito control, Meyers said that in the past month the cheap and once deadly DDT has almost completely lost its effectiveness, and that the district is turning to new and far more costly insecticides to kill the mosquito larvae. Though a similar trouble has been encountered every year in lesser degree this is the first time that the chemical has proven almost entirely worthless. Kern, Tulare and other districts in the south part of the valley have also experienced the same trouble.

Most encouraging of the new insecticides, he said, is an organic phosphate, EPN, which has been used with remarkable success in Kern and other districts with marked success. EPN has no accumulative or residual effect and has been cleared by the Bureau of Chemistry, State Department of Agriculture, for pasture application at a rate of 1/10 pound per acre.
To use the new material, however, the districts spray airplanes and trucks must be fitted with new equipment, which will be done this winter. He said that Los Banos, with the county's most critical mosquito problem, will be the first district to install and use the new equipment. The cost per acre of the new insecticide will be about 3 ½ times that of the old DDT, and with some 50,000 acres of "problem area" on the West Side that must be treated regularly throughout the year, Meyers explained that the district's expense sheet will be substantially increased.

New Rotarians

Preceding Meyers' talk at the Rotary luncheon, past Rotary president Robert L. Puccinelli officially welcomed three new members of the club and gave them an indoctrination lecture emphasizing Rotary principles, objectives, and attendance. The new members are Stanley Kaber, superintendent at the Golden State Co.'s Los Banos plant; William Buscho, manager of Safeway Store; and Ned B. Dickson, manager of the Los Banos office of the American Trust Co.

September 11, 1953

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