A resident who says she has studied the matter asserted the new solar farm installed at the Joint Forces Training Base is producing a swarm of rats and mice so large it is costing homeowners thousands to protect themselves.
“The project on the base with 1000 solar panels on 50 acres of unended soil is causing rat and mice problems across the city. I know this is not technically your purview, it’s the Joint Forces Training Base’s land, but it has become a community problem,” Los Al resident Sallie Rodman told the Council.
The project, she said, “is causing rat and mice problems across the city.”
“It is really a problem,” said Rodman, and rats are running wild.
“They’re running through our garages, and our attics, and even our houses. And so we’re doing all we can, but this cost us money,” she added.
“I’ve got five bait boxes,” said Rodman. “I had to redo the end insulation in my attic for $7,000 because they (rats) ate their way into what I thought was a rat-proof house,” she exclaimed.
In addition to the nuisance/damage factor, Rodman said there’s always a concern about disease.
Rats and mice, she said, are known carriers of what she called “the disease factor.”
“I’m also worried about that because the rats and mice have ticks, mites, and fleas on them, which can carry many diseases including Lyme disease,” said the concerned owner.
“It’s a community problem and it’s in Seal Beach, it’s in Garden Grove. It’s in Cypress… everybody’s complaining about it,” said Rodman.
She asked the Council to intervene and help residents ask the Joint Forces Training Base for compensation to mitigate the costs residents are facing to deal with the infusion of rats and mice.
I know they sell their electricity from the solar panels to San Diego, maybe they could put a little bit of a surcharge on there for us to help us out,” she told the Council.
“I don’t know what the solution is myself. I’m just asking you to help us facilitate the solution,” asked Rodman.
The ENE has reached out to the solar company and JFTB for comment.
In other action on Sunday, the council learned from Police Chief Michael Claborn that the city will soon be home to a $350,000 piece of military equipment.
In actuality, said Claborn, the armored vehicle is part of the Urban Area Security initiative and would be paid for entirely using a grant.
“This is a regional asset that will be utilized for anti-terrorism, training and education purposes,” the police chief said. The grant facilitates an additional piece of equipment to be available for west Orange County in emergencies, he said.
Claborn told the Council that the only piece of similar equipment available to law enforcement authorities in the region was a 2009 version of the vehicle that he said was now somewhat “outdated” that is currently staged in Westminster.
With the equipment now staged in Los Alamitos, Claborn said the city would have the first right of refusal to utilize the equipment should it be needed for a quicker response time for any type of active shooter incident or be used as a rescue vehicle if needed for any kind of barricaded active shooter for any type of school shooting or similar incident.
In addition, new technology on the emergency vehicle allows for the simultaneous mitigation of fire threats while providing armored cover, said Claborn.
“This vehicle would allow us to mitigate that while attempting to extract or address any type of threat that may be in that environment,” he said, “because up until this point the technology has not been able to allow fire and police to address a situation at the same time.”
He said law enforcement authorities would cooperate with the Orange County Fire Authority in such situations.
He also made it clear that the new vehicle would be available for other law enforcement and security authorities throughout the region should any incident occur where the military type vehicle might be useful.
In other action, the Los Alamitos City Council heard from Lora Young, an official with the Orange County Mosquito and Vector Control District explain its overall operations.
In short, she said the agency, one of only two with district wide authority, basically is charged with the responsibility to control “any insect that can bite or transmit disease.”
With a board large enough to contain a representative from each of Orange County’s 35 cities, she detailed their operations and noted that there are 27 various types of mosquitos present in Orange County.
And, she said, the recent heavy rains have produced an abundance of the pesky mosquitos, with Young noting that the year has seen a volume of mosquitos four times the average.
In addition to abatement activities, she said the agency staffs state of the art laboratories to check for diseases in mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, etc. to keep Orange County communities safe.
In other action, the Council;
• Celebrated Code Enforcement Officer Appreciation month by recognizing its Code Enforcement staff.
• Recognized Debbie Jackobs from Flags with a Flair as business of the month.
• Thanked retiring employee Trina Zenovka from the City’s Parks and Recreation department for her service to the City.
