NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Some residents in North Las Vegas are more than a little bugged. Nuisance flies called midges are swarming the neighborhoods near the Sloan Channel, the discharge point for the city's treated wastewater.
As Clark County works to combat the pests, it points to the insect invasion as one more reason a federal court should stop the flow.
You may remember the City of North Las Vegas began discharging treated wastewater into Clark County's Sloan Channel last June without the county's permission. Each entity believes they are within their legal rights, and a lawsuit is pending in federal court.
Yet while both sides wait for a ruling, nearby residents wait for relief from thousands of tiny pests.
The Sloan Channel now carries more than 16 million gallons of treated wastewater per day from the North Las Vegas' water reclamation facility to Lake Mead. Every drop of it a trespass, according to county officials, while city leaders insist they can go with the flow.
Stuck in the middle, nearby neighbors like Sarah Tercero and Garland Schmueckle have become unwitting hosts to an unwelcome nuisance.
"It's not just me that has a an issue," said Tercero. "We have bugs we didn't have before."
Born of the water, tiny pests called midges, commonly confused with mosquitoes, are breeding in the silt beneath the surface -- most brought in by recent rains.
"The little red blood worms that are starting to move around, see you've got them here and here, those are all the larvae of the chronomid midge," said Chris Bramley with Clark County.
Non-biting adult midges swarm by the thousands, primarily during the early morning and evening hours. Chris Bramley with Clark County's Vector Control Division is working to cut their numbers. Last week and again Tuesday, county crews used heavy equipment to scrape the bottom of the channel.
"The algae and the mud and the midges all go together, so if we can keep it clean, then the breeding situation is going to go away," he said.
Before Bramley can finish his explanation, another set of neighbors seeks his attention. To Martha and Hector Pelaez, spotting Bramley is better than sighting a celebrity.
"How about these little bugs?" said neighbor Martha Pelaez. "They're a big nuisance... The whole front door, the back, my pet's place, even in the house and even when I go in the garage."
Bramley continues that he has already noticed a decline in the larvae.
"When I first was doing my surveys I would scoop out about a square foot and I stopped counting at 500," he said.
With an average lifecycle of seven days, fewer creepy crawlies means fewer adults. It is just one part of the solution to what Tercero considers a larger problem -- a river of treated wastewater right in her backyard.
"I don't think it's a good idea to have it free flowing, but since it's here in this area, it's ok. Now, they would not do this up in Summerlin. They wouldn't," she said.
The City of North Las Vegas says it's monitoring the situation and insists the midges did not come from the water reclamation facility. The plant operates with closed tanks, not open ones where bugs would have an opportunity to get in.
The county says it will continue to treat the problem and is exploring organic bacteria and other insect growth regulators to keep the bugs at bay.
