Mr ELFERINK - 2000-05-10
Recently heavy rains and flooding in central Australia have left a great deal of surface water right across my electorate, but particularly in the Ilparpa Swamp area. Can the minister advise what action is being taken to alleviate the mosquito problem which is emanating from the swamp.
ANSWER
An excellent question, Mr Speaker, from a hard working member. On the way out of Alice Springs only last week I saw him with his tent set up in close vicinity to Blatherskite Park and he was enticing people to come and have a chat to him about local issues. One issue is mosquitoes. It has been featuring in the Alice Springs press, and I am pleased with that, because those members that were listening during the last sittings would be aware that we issued an alert at about that time that we anticipated the heavy rains that fell in the Alice Springs area would bring a mosquito plague.
The mosquito plague is not just an issue of nuisance to members, though that is fundamentally the issue there at the moment. It also has other problems, and they are health problems, because the common banded mosquito which finds the area particularly attractive to live, that is Culex annulirostris, is a vector of Australian encephalitis and Ross River virus disease. Both of these diseases have a big impact on health if people are unfortunate enough to have been bitten by a mosquito that is carrying the virus and we can anticipate that there will be mosquitos in pretty much plague proportions as it gets hotter.
The issues of what we do about it are vexed. We have sentinel chickens in the area so that we can tell when the mosquitos are carrying the virus. We do weekly monitoring so that we can have trap sites around the swamp and in the rural vicinity to do number, virus and species counts, and that is in conjunction with the Alice Springs Town Council.
We have an enormous area that is inundated. For the benefit of honourable members there’s an 80 ha swamp in the area, which is a natural swamp. There is a 25 ha tree farm that we use to help take up the water. There is Blatherskite Park, which is well known to Alice Springs residents, and there is 49 ha of ponds, so it is a substantial body of water.
The solutions that we have available to us are not many. We can look at chemical solutions and that is in the form of spraying, and we’ve used them. We have been aware of this problem since 1974 and have had our weekly monitoring since way back then. They are only partly effective due to the very heavy reed growth around the swamp and there are also engineering solutions. As the Chief Minister discussed in Alice Springs about the dam, we should open up all the options and discuss them with the people.
Engineering solutions will be welcomed by some and not by others, but essentially they would mean the digging out of the swamp and eradication of some of the reed that is around the swamp so that those areas that are hard to spray and which harbour mosquitos can be readily accessed.
I am sure the people of Alice Springs would be aghast to think that there might be machines in that claypan area near Ilparpa but I think these issues should be put to the people because there are only some options that are available. You can live with the mosquitoes; you can look to some engineering solutions. What I can inform the House of is that, in conjunction with the local member, my staff made a visit there during last week and we are putting a small group together to look at the solutions, to bring them in form of options to the people of Alice Springs and to have some process where we can discuss them.
I thank the honourable member for his interest and I undertake to keep him involved in the future.7
ANSWER
An excellent question, Mr Speaker, from a hard working member. On the way out of Alice Springs only last week I saw him with his tent set up in close vicinity to Blatherskite Park and he was enticing people to come and have a chat to him about local issues. One issue is mosquitoes. It has been featuring in the Alice Springs press, and I am pleased with that, because those members that were listening during the last sittings would be aware that we issued an alert at about that time that we anticipated the heavy rains that fell in the Alice Springs area would bring a mosquito plague.
The mosquito plague is not just an issue of nuisance to members, though that is fundamentally the issue there at the moment. It also has other problems, and they are health problems, because the common banded mosquito which finds the area particularly attractive to live, that is Culex annulirostris, is a vector of Australian encephalitis and Ross River virus disease. Both of these diseases have a big impact on health if people are unfortunate enough to have been bitten by a mosquito that is carrying the virus and we can anticipate that there will be mosquitos in pretty much plague proportions as it gets hotter.
The issues of what we do about it are vexed. We have sentinel chickens in the area so that we can tell when the mosquitos are carrying the virus. We do weekly monitoring so that we can have trap sites around the swamp and in the rural vicinity to do number, virus and species counts, and that is in conjunction with the Alice Springs Town Council.
We have an enormous area that is inundated. For the benefit of honourable members there’s an 80 ha swamp in the area, which is a natural swamp. There is a 25 ha tree farm that we use to help take up the water. There is Blatherskite Park, which is well known to Alice Springs residents, and there is 49 ha of ponds, so it is a substantial body of water.
The solutions that we have available to us are not many. We can look at chemical solutions and that is in the form of spraying, and we’ve used them. We have been aware of this problem since 1974 and have had our weekly monitoring since way back then. They are only partly effective due to the very heavy reed growth around the swamp and there are also engineering solutions. As the Chief Minister discussed in Alice Springs about the dam, we should open up all the options and discuss them with the people.
Engineering solutions will be welcomed by some and not by others, but essentially they would mean the digging out of the swamp and eradication of some of the reed that is around the swamp so that those areas that are hard to spray and which harbour mosquitos can be readily accessed.
I am sure the people of Alice Springs would be aghast to think that there might be machines in that claypan area near Ilparpa but I think these issues should be put to the people because there are only some options that are available. You can live with the mosquitoes; you can look to some engineering solutions. What I can inform the House of is that, in conjunction with the local member, my staff made a visit there during last week and we are putting a small group together to look at the solutions, to bring them in form of options to the people of Alice Springs and to have some process where we can discuss them.
I thank the honourable member for his interest and I undertake to keep him involved in the future.7
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016