By Tanya Drobness/The Star-Ledger
November 15, 2009, 8:00AM
MORRIS COUNTY -- Ron Foster stands ankle deep in a mucky, foul-smelling swamp in Denville festooned with dry leaves. He shakes his head as he pulls a bald tire out of the mud — a tire, he said, somebody dumped without much regard to nature.
"People know what they’re doing, but they don’t care," the Morris County Mosquito Commission senior inspector said one morning last week as he leaned on a giant rake.
Crews from the Morris County Mosquito Commission and the Municipal Utilities Authority are finding and removing discarded tires from streams, roadsides and wooded areas throughout the county as part of the commission's year-round mosquito control effort.
Then, he points to another tire filled with rain water. "Look, these tires will continue to produce mosquitoes. The kind we don’t like to have around."
If you don’t want your old tires, mosquitoes do.
These irritating pests thrive in tires, where water collects, and provides a place for them to produce thousands more.
So now through March, as part of the commission’s year-round mosquito control, crews are taking ATVs, trailers and trucks into the backwoods, swamps and along roadsides to remove discarded tires to help control mosquito levels and reduce threats of West Nile virus and health and environmental hazards.
"A lot of people don’t put two and two together, and don’t realize they are creating a habitat," said Kristian McMorland, the commission’s superintendent.
Used tires have become the most important domestic mosquito producer in the country, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
"Anything that collects water provides the potential for mosquito breeding. Tire removal is an important initiative to control mosquitoes and reduce the chance for West Nile virus," said DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura.
Crews have picked up 51,539 tires in Morris County since the program launched eight years ago – likely preventing so-called "inborn" cases of West Nile virus in Morris County, McMorland said. That means all cases of West Nile in the county have been transient, said the commission’s assistant chief inspector, Roger Armstrong.
"It can return because the dumping continues, but at least 50,000 habitats are gone," Armstrong said.
Mosquitoes, which carry disease and can cause several viruses in humans, breed through the fall. Those that place their egg masses directly on water breed in various places, including swamps and ditches.
Mosquitoes can breed by the tens of thousands in one tire, McMorland and Armstrong said.
Roger Armstrong, Asst. Chief Inspector with the Morris County Mosquito Commission, drags tires out of a wooded area in Denville in this photo taken on Nov. 10. "Not only are we dealing with natural habitats, but we are also dealing with the habitats man has created," Armstrong said.
Crews have removed the most tires in Rockaway Township, where 14,281 tires have been discarded, according to commission data. Second highest is Roxbury with 6,267 discarded tires, followed by Mount Olive with 6,212. Other municipalities with high concentrations of discarded tires include Jefferson, Randolph, Parsippany and Montville.
On the other hand, the commission has not found discarded tires in Chester Borough or the Mendhams, and fewer than a dozen have been discovered in Boonton, according to data.
There are 63 different species of mosquitoes in New Jersey. Of those, 44 are in Morris County, McMorland said.
Mosquito levels are highest along the Passaic River flood plain, stretching across the eastern part of the county from Lincoln Park to Long Hill, he said.
The Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority provides a large Dumpster to hold the tires, then transports them to a transfer station in Parsippany. From there, the tires are taken to a recycling market in Lakewood where they are grinded up and re-used for items like playgrounds, footing for horse riding rings and landscaping, said Kathleen Hourihan, the MUA’s district recycling coordinator.
Between October 2008 to March, it cost around $2,700 to transport and dispose of the tires, Hourihan said. A grant to cover the costs came from the state’s Clean Communities fund, she said.
A similar tire removal program is under way at the Middlesex County Mosquito Extermination Commission, based in Edison. At least 1,600 tires were collected countywide last year, said Glenn Levinson, superintendent of the Middlesex commission.
"Each one makes a difference," Levinson said.
In Union County, volunteer days are held four times a year when residents turn in old tires under the county’s hazardous waste program and as part of an effort to help reduce mosquito levels, said county spokesman Sebastian D’Elia.
In New Jersey’s northwest corner, mosquito inspectors yank out tires as they are found, said Herb Yardley, Sussex County Department of Environmental and Public Health Services administrator and health officer. At least 20 tires were picked up countywide last year, he said.
"Any tire that can be recycled is important," Yardley said. "There’s no reason for people not to properly dispose of them."
Previous coverage:
• Lake Musconetcong neighbors blast N.J. for allowing weeds, mosquito population to grow
• Morris County agency taking preemptive steps to ward off expected mosquito explosion
