Rep. Drury Chimes in on Pesticide Spray in Highland Park

Rep. Scott Drury did not know that the pesticide Duet would be sprayed in his district on Thursday evening until that morning.

Just like Highland Park City Councilman Kim Stone, he told Patch he would have liked more notice.

"The concern we have no real notice about this," he said Thursday afternoon. "We intend to continue to investigate how this decision was made."

The pesticide was sprayed from an airplane over Highland Park, Deerfield, Bannockburn, Riverwoods and Highwood on Thursday at around dusk. Both Stone and Drury are concerned about the pesticide's toxicity.

"Just reading the actual label... it specifically says that it's highly toxic to aquatic organisms," Drury said.

On Wednesday, Patch spoke with Clarke entomologist George Balis, who said that same label indicated the pesticide was harmless and the concern was unnecessary. This will be the first time since 2010 that it will be sprayed over a wider area from a plane. It's expected to kill 85 to 90 percent of the mosquitos targeted.

"The application is not being made over Lake Michigan," Balis said. "The reality is… each municipality understands why the treatment is happening."

Drury did not seem swayed by Balis' remarks.

"There should be no impact, but they can't say there won't be," Drury said. "They can't claim they know this is safe."

Some Patch readers were similarly upset when they heard that Duet would be sprayed.

"There are other ways to deal with the emerging mosquito population than having a plane flying at a low-level dumping toxins all over our town—and neighboring towns—for an hour," said belinda brock. "Gardens, pools, playground equipment, lawns will all be covered with this."

Another reader agreed.

"There is no health threat to the public except from the spraying itself," said Thomas Chamberlin.

Not everyone was on the same page.

"Personally I'd rather have the spraying and not have mosquitoes transmitting West Nile Virus, encephalitis, and other diseases," said David Greenberg. "The quantity of spray is about 1 tablespoon per acre. It's done after dusk so bees are back in their hives, and the mosquitoes are out and active."

The biggest concern that Drury has, however, is not the amount of pesticide sprayed, but the lack of notice given that it would be happening.

"No one really knew this was going on," he said. 

Drury wondered if the short notice of the spraying was intentional in that it prevented more people from speaking out against it.

"One of the reasons they don't want people to know is because if they don't know they can't raise the issue they've been raising," Drury said about constituents who reached out to him Thursday voicing their concern about the spraying. Drury says he plans to look into how Southlake Mosquito Abatement District, which initiated the spray, makes its decisions.

"A government in shadows," he said, "isn't good government."