Polk County Mosquito Control

Polk County Mosquito Control is a unit of Polk County government in Florida. It works to keep biting mosquitoes under control and to protect public health. Its work covers the county between the Tampa and Orlando areas.

Residents can ask for help through an online service request. The unit also posts a spray schedule and a map tool for finding your spray zone. The page is open in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. Calls and requests do not decide where adult mosquito spraying happens. They do help staff spot problem areas that regular checks have missed. When a request points to a local problem, an inspector can be sent to look.

The program uses four steps to control mosquitoes. The first is prevention. This means working with planners so that ditches, ponds and water systems are not built in ways that create breeding sites. The second is source reduction. Crews remove water that holds eggs and larvae, for example by emptying containers and filling wet low areas with soil.

The third step is larviciding. Crews treat water that holds young mosquitoes so they never grow into adults. The unit says every acre treated this way means fewer acres to cover later with spray trucks or aircraft. The last step is adulticiding, which is used only as a final effort. Spraying happens at night, when mosquitoes are most active and bees, dragonflies and butterflies are less so. The main adulticide is permethrin, used in very small amounts per acre.

The unit does not spray on a fixed calendar. It treats only when surveillance shows mosquito numbers that meet State guidelines. It checks mosquito numbers on an ongoing basis. State rules also bar spraying without scientific data to back it up. Organisers of public events can ask for checks if they give notice at least three working days ahead.

Each night's work is logged and reviewed the next day. A GPS device on each truck records where it drove and whether the spray system was on. Supervisors use this record to confirm that no part of an area was missed. Pesticides must be approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency and then by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Services

• Mosquito control service requests
• Spray schedule
• Spray zone finder
• Mosquito surveillance
• Larviciding
• Source reduction
• Adult mosquito spraying
• Special event mosquito checks