ESCONDIDO: Residents bugged

Eye gnat infestation to be topic of community meeting
This story has been corrected since its original posting

By GARY WARTH - Staff Writer | Tuesday, August 12, 2008 5:01 PM PDT ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- After fleeing his patio because of eye gnats all summer, Escondido resident Norm Barnhard said he hopes a meeting he organized for next week with a leading expert on the pests will offer some solutions for him and his neighbors near Kit Carson Park.

"We can't have functions outside," Barnhard said this week in talking about the tiny, annoying pests that have buzzed relentlessly around his ears and eyes for months. "You can't invite neighbors over and sit outside. These things will just hover all around and get in your eyes and ears. It has just kind of diminished outdoor activity."

After calling the county to complain about the gnats, Barnhard said he learned there is no gnat hotline or response team to investigate complaints because the insects are considered a nuisance and not a health problem.

He said county officials told him, however, that they had become so frustrated by all the calls they receive about gnats that they funded a study this year to investigate a particularly bad eye gnat problem in the desert town of Jacumba at the county's eastern end.

The hope, they said, is that any solution to getting rid of the Jacumba gnats will work elsewhere as well.

Barnhard has invited the scientist leading the study, James Bethke, an entomologist affiliated with UC Riverside to speak in Escondido next week.

The meeting, which is open to the public, is scheduled for 9 a.m. Aug. 14 in the Community Room of Westfield North County Fair. The room is near McDonald's at the mall.

"The immediate concern is ... what can we do about it?" Barnhard said. "And what's the long-term solution? Let's find out what we can do now and find out if we can fund more research for later on."

The county has funded $50,000 for Bethke to oversee a study of the eye gnat problem in Jacumba, where residents suspect the pests may be breeding at an organic farm.

While the gnats in Escondido are not as prevalent as in Jacumba, the insects have made relaxing outside on summer days unbearable for Barnhard, whose backyard in the gated community of Del Lago on the Greens overlooks the 18th hole of the Vineyard in Escondido Golf Club, and many of his neighbors.

Golfers usually experience more gnats than birdies and eagles on the Vineyard course in the summer.

"It's terrible," said Ryan Garcia, who has worked in the pro shop at the golf course for four years. "We buy gnat repellant and supply it to our guests, because it's something that's going to affect their time out here."

Uncertain source

Garcia and Barnhard said they first noticed the gnat problem about three years ago, saying they suspect it might have something to do with the bridge construction at Lake Hodges. Others said, however, that they have noticed the eye gnat problem for much longer.

Nobody really knows where they're coming from or how to get rid of them, said county Agriculture Commissioner Bob Atkins.

"We know they like high organic wet areas, and most of our area is chaparral and desert," he said about one reason the gnats are swarming around a neighborhood between the golf course and lake.

The gnats don't bite but can spread conjunctivitis ---- also known as pinkeye ---- Atkins said.

Barnhard said he caught pinkeye for the first time this year.

The county does have a vector control program for mosquitoes, and, coincidentally, sprayed insecticides from a helicopter over Kit Carson Park just this week as a way of preventing the spread of the West Nile virus. The county has no such program for gnats, however, because the insects do not carry a threat to either people or agriculture, Atkins said.

"There's just so much government can do," he said. "It's not something we can go and do any enforcement on to correct, but it's a nuisance."

Ed Hall, a resident of Vineyard Estates near the golf course, knows just what a nuisance the bugs can be. He said he first noticed the gnat problem about nine years ago, and he said a call to the county led to the discovery of improper composting in an agriculture area.

The gnats were back with a vengeance the next year, however, and have returned every summer since.

Atkins said he thinks a county worker found the compost in an informal investigation, and he said he doubts there ever will be formal gnat investigations. He said he is hopeful, however, that Bethke's Jacumba study may lead to information the county can share with residents seeking ways to curb the problem.

Researchers are not completely in the dark when it comes to dealing with eye gnat infestations. Following concerns that farmworkers' productivity was dropping because of the annoying pests, authorities in the agriculture area outside of Palm Springs formed the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District in 1928 to investigate ways to deal with the pest.

The district fought the gnats with poison baits in agriculture fields for years, but for the past decade it instead has placed 8,000 to 10,000 traps with nonhazardous ingredients at farms, golf course and country clubs throughout the valley. The effort is said to have reduced the problem to a more tolerable level.

After reading up on the Coachella Valley approach, Barnhard said he made three traps of his own out of plastic liter bottles that he filled with water and raw eggs. The traps are stinky and gross, he said, but they do lure in countless eye gnats that can't find their way out.

Barnhard also sprays his backyard plants every five weeks with chemicals that kill or prevents gnats from breeding, although neither the traps nor chemicals seems to keep them away.

Atkins said Bethke's year-long study at Jacumba may reveal a new type of trap or other management practices to best deal with the problem.

Still, he is hesitant to say there ever will be a way to get rid of the pests completely.

"I don't want to be a doomsayer at all, but there are no guarantees," he said. "We don't control everything in nature."

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.

GNAT FACTS

-- Eye gnats are prevalent in the southern United States, primarily in parts of California and Arizona. They do not bite.

-- Female gnats swarm around people because they are looking for protein and sense it in eyes, noses, ears and scabs.

-- They are about 1/16- to 1/8-inch long and have dark bodies with clear wings.

-- Eye gnats are very common in warm, dry regions that have moist, sandy soils that are freshly plowed and contain abundant humus or vegetable matter, such as cover crops or manure.

-- The ideal temperature for eye gnat activity is 90 to 100 degrees. Temperatures below 70 degrees slow their activities, although eye gnats can survive freezing temperatures.

Source: The Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District

CORRECTION: Gnat scientist misidentified

An Aug. 6 article about an Escondido neighborhood bothered by gnats incorrectly named the person who is leading a county-funded study of a similar problem in Jacumba.

James Bethke is the name of the scientist studying the gnats, while Norm Barnhard is the Escondido resident who organized a community meeting with Bethke.

The meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday in the Community Room of Westfield North County Fair.

We apologize.

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