Desplaines Valley Mosquito Abatement District

The Desplaines Valley Mosquito Abatement District encompasses a 77 square mile area of the Des Plaines River and Salt Creek valley in the western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. This area is bound by the Cook DuPage county line on the west, North Avenue on the North, 87th Street/Des Plaines River on the south, and Harlem Avenue on the east except in Oak Park, where Austin Boulevard is the eastern boundary. The District is comprised of Lyons, Oak Park, Proviso, Riverside, and River Forest townships and includes thirty one villages. The District is intersected from north to south by the Des Plaines River and in the southern quarter by the Sanitary Drainage and Ship Canal. Other waterways include three major creeks flowing into the Des Plaines River and 4.5 miles of ponded water of the defunct Illinois and Michigan Canal. Property composition is estimated as 73 percent residential, 18 percent industrial, 8 percent Forest Preserves, and 1 percent rural or undeveloped. The Desplaines Valley Mosquito Abatement District is an independent municipality, established in 1927 by the Mosquito Abatement Districts Act which provided for the organization of tax supported mosquito abatement districts within Illinois. It is one of the two original mosquito abatement districts formed under this Act. The District was initially established to control nuisance mosquitoes, primarily Aedes vexans (Meigen) which were produced annually from predominant lowland plains and marshes. However, as more knowledge was attained about specific species and their direct link to disease transmission was gained, a new dimension of disease vector control was added to the purpose of mosquito abatement. Currently, both nuisance and vector control operations are carried out by the District. Since its inception, the District's control measures have undoubtedly been influential in the residential and industrial growth of the area.