Ledyard weighs aerial spraying to control gypsy moth impact

Neighboring towns may be asked to join effort

“It was so bad, my white house looked black.” RESIDENT NAOMI RODRIGUEZ, IN LETTER TO TOWN COUNCIL

Ledyard — Town officials will consider whether to begin aerial spraying for gypsy moths after residents came before the town council last week expressing concern about the safety of defoliated trees.

The discussion will continue during a Land Use, Planning and Public Works committee meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. today in the Town Hall Annex meeting room.

Going before the Town Council last Wednesday, Naomi Rodriguez, president of the Parsonage Hill Manor Homeowners Association, said that the infestation of gypsy moths in town has gotten out of control.

“It was so bad, my white house looked black,” she said in a letter to the Town Council.

She and several other residents from the area repeated concerns at the meeting Wednesday that following two years of defoliation, a third could be costly and could pose a significant public safety risk with a number of dead oak trees possibly falling to the ground.

Spraying is effective against the gypsy moth caterpillers, which lay their egg masses high up in oak and other hardwood trees.

If the town agrees to proceed with spraying, it would agree to a contract with a spraying company, determine which property owners want to participate and collect fees from them.

Rodriguez noted they are still in the process of finding the right aerial spraying service for the number of residents who want it.

According to Rodriguez, there is only one company currently licensed in the state to conduct spraying for gypsy moths, Dynamic Aviation Group, a Virginia-based firm that operates 140 turboprop aircraft and regularly does large-scale spraying with pesticides.

Kurt Friedemann, business development manager at Dynamic Aviation Group, noted that his company doesn’t take on contracts below 20,000 acres — slightly under the total acreage of Ledyard. He said smaller areas could be better served by helicopters — as was done in the 1980s in Ledyard — or drones.

To try to meet the 20,000-acre threshold, Rodriguez is also in the process of reaching out to surrounding towns in Connecticut and Rhode Island to see if they would consider participating as well.

“There’s a good chance they would be affected next year ... (and) it will be too late, we want to make sure it’s not too late,” Rodriguez said.

Councilors agreed that getting other towns, such as Canterbury and North Stonington, would be a good way to save money.

Aerial spraying technology has advanced recently, according to Robert Isner, director of the Waste Engineering and Enforcement Division of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which oversees the small number of aerial spraying permits each year.

He noted that DEEP regulations require contractors to map spraying areas with GPS positioning systems to prevent pesticides from going on adjacent properties. He added that buffers between spraying areas generally aren’t necessary.

Several other companies have expressed interest in getting permits for the aerial spraying program this year, he said.

The moth infestation hasn’t been evenly distributed across Ledyard, as councilor Steve Eichelberg noted, and he thanked the residents for bringing the issue to the town’s attention.

“Back in the 1970s, one year would be good, the next the summer would look like winter,” he said. “Where I live in Ledyard there’s no significant problem (but) as I was traveling up and down up Route 11 ... all the way up there’s huge areas of defoliation.”

Kirby Stafford, head of the Department of Entomology at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, said the department is finishing up aerial surveys of defoliation caused by gypsy moths, but it appears to be another bad year north of the Interstate 95 corridor.

He said the state of Massachusetts recently finished its survey and found a nearly 10-fold increase in the defoliated acreage: from 38,000 in 2015 to over 360,000 acres this year.

Stafford said it would be a “gamble” either way: Another drought next spring could mean more growth in the gypsy moth population, or some rain could bring it to a halt.

The biological agent recommended to combat gypsy moths is BT, or bacillus thuringiensis: a bacterium that the caterpillers must eat in order for it to be effective. It works best when sprayed from the air and only affects caterpillers.

Isner noted that BT “is really commonly used” for pesticide management and is “safe for the environment and exposure to humans.”

Town Council Chairman Linda Davis, who was involved in the town’s efforts against gypsy moths in the 1980s, said that the biggest challenge she saw was collecting fees from residents who want their properties sprayed and educating residents about the issue.

“It’s going to take a lot of education ... in terms of understanding exactly what BT is and understanding what happens when these trees are attacked year after year,” she said.