RAINS HELP OUT INSECTS; MOSQUITO BREEDING SITES FED BY STORMS.

Byline: David Greenberg Daily News Staff Writer

A rash of new mosquito breeding areas is serving a reminder to Ventura County residents that the nagging effects of winter's El Nino-driven storms are still present.

The county's short-staffed Vector Control Program has hired two additional seasonal workers to deposit pesticide at hundreds of additional natural springs that cropped up this spring as a result of the storms.

``Because of all the rainfall, bodies of water that usually would be dried up by now are still flowing,'' program manager Bob Gallagher said.

During warm weather, creeks, basins, gutters, marshes and flood control channels provide a breeding habitat for the 21 species of mosquitoes that have been identified in the county.

Within 14 days, microscopic eggs laid on the water surface quickly hatch into larvae, which evolve into pupa and then mosquitoes.

While Simi Valley and the upper Ojai Valley showed a particularly high need for mosquito abatement this summer, vector control employees charted 1,179 potential breeding grounds countywide, records show.

The staff of four full-time and eight seasonal employees - who work from May through September or October - made 1,600 inspections in July and 1,503 in June. That compares with 1,440 inspections made in July 1997 and 1,239 made in June 1997. Calls identifying new breeding areas are also on the rise: 66 this July compared with 43 in July 1997.

``Some sources we inspect every week,'' said Randy Smith, an environmental health specialist. ``In some sources, we will spray them and recheck them in two weeks because the mosquitoes have laid eggs again in that source and are going through their life cycle again.''

Despite the increase in breeding habitats this year, Gallagher said there have been no reported cases of mosquito-transmitted diseases, such as encephalitis, which is transmitted by the Culex tarsalis - the county's most common mosquito species. The disease can cause flulike symptoms or result in coma and even death.

Inspectors kill insects in their formative stages by spraying or dropping granules of bacillus - a bacterial substance affecting mosquito larvae only - into the water.

They also stock larger bodies of water with mosquito fish, which feast on the insects.

The program, an arm of the Environmental Health Division, operates on a $310,000-a-year budget and oversees abatement countywide, except for Moorpark, which has its own program.

Vector control employees are funded by cities that contract their services, parcel owners who pay assessment fees and the Flood Control District, which relies on the office to alleviate insects in their flood channels.

Smith said he does not expect the number of problem areas to diminish until late summer, when a significant number of temporary water sources have dried up and the temperatures begin to drop.

``A lot of mosquito species we have don't like the cold weather, so they don't function as well,'' he said. ``A lot of the adults die, and the larva stage takes longer to mature. But we'll still have mosquito problems into September.''