Open Lid (Mirror Photo)
Sent to Cape Charles Mirror – “One of the less-talked-about wonderful things about living in Cape Charles is the ability to take off for months and be assured that your home is safe. Everyone watches out for you and you can even forget to lock your home, as we often do, with no worrisome consequence – with one exception: the trashcan. You can hop around the alleys and you will find enough open cans, with the amount of water in the can proportional to the owner’s absence. This summer, after a very short absence (less than a month) compared to our usual, I found the trashcan open, half-filled with rainwater and populated with mosquito larvae. Subsequently, I walked through the alleys, and found plenty of similarly open trashcans with floating detritus.
Mosquito factories are churning in every other backyard, and the town is buzzing with pests. Don’t even bother spraying; for $13 monthly per household, the garbage service will undo the extermination many times over. With the zika virus already in Virginia and the threat it presents to infants and fetuses, what kind of asswipe service is this, that not only hampers our lifestyle, but threatens the well-being of the community?!”
A walk through any alley will confirm this account. With many lids wide open, they have been collecting water all summer, creating the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. With so many many travelers coming to Cape Charles from many different areas, the possibility that an Aedes mosquito can find its way to Cape Charles is possible. 43 cases of Zika have been reported in the State, with two in the Hampton Roads area.
Trashcan holding water (Mirror Photo)
Still waters in many areas are the havens for moscitors, tires, bird baths, uncleared house gutters, can you all think of others
Drill some holes in the bottom of the can.
David Boyd suggests a simple common sense solution. Thank you David. This is a much better approach than creating more rules and regulations that won’t be followed.
I guess if we can’t keep dog poop out of the park and off the beach and litter out of the streets we are imbeciles and can’t keep our trash cans clean and closed. Or, could it be the old 80 -20 rule in reverse? 80% of us do the right thing but 20% of us are just incapable of ever ‘getting it’.
Why is it that in other cities and towns the garbage trucks never open trashcans behind? Why can’t Davis Disposal do its job properly? They should be the ones to drill the holes if they’re incapable of closing the lids. They are certainly paid enough to do their job properly. Here is a better solution: fire them and find another business who can both pick up garbage AND close the lids.
Close the cans……
Drainage holes would allow possibly environmentally damaging contents to leak out.
Can’t have that, can we?
Gee, if only there was an effective, efficient chemical capable of killing mosquitoes…..that Rachel Carson hadn’t had banned, resulting in millions and millions of deaths.
Shucks, I wish we still knew how to do things in America.