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NMCAW: Meet Hailey, a Mosquito Field Technician from our Plymouth Facility!
June 20, 2025
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- Sean Ford – Catch Basin Technician
June 16-22, 2025 is National Mosquito Control Awareness Week! MMCD will be highlighting staff members in various positions who work together to protect the public from mosquitos. Stay tuned to our website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for updates throughout the week!
Entomology Lab Technicians, Field Technicians, and Catch Basin Technicians are all vital parts of our team at MMCD. Each year around 180 seasonal employees join us in these various positions to help fight against insect-born disease. These individuals come from a variety of backgrounds and career stages. Today we catch up with Sean, a Catch Basin Technician based out of our St. Paul facility:
Sean Ford, Catch Basin Technician
How did you get involved with MMCD?
Well, I’m a biology major, I was just trying to find anything that is loosely related to that.
Also, my dad used to work for MMCD back in like ‘89 or ’90 - he was one of the original people who took part in the black fly project.
What do you do on a daily basis?
We’ll be given a map book for a two-week session, and we have to do roughly half of that book each week. And we have to bike around, or if the weather is too bad, drive to all of the catch basins there, and then we put our treatment material, p-35 larvicide, in. Each section, or each map, is roughly a square mile, although we can skip if we can’t access them for whatever reason, like, there’s construction, or someone’s parked over one.
Why do you feel your work is important?
Because there are so many catch basins, they kind of need a whole team dedicated specifically to it.
Those areas are usually going to be closest to where people are, and as they’re hard to reach, and they’re usually wet, they also are very easy spots for mosquito larvae to live. Unlike a tire or a bucket, we can’t just turn it over and get the water out, and because they collect rainwater, it’s just the perfect condition for mosquitos. And they are usually close to where people are, so they have easy access to people once they become adults.
What is the most interesting part of your job?
The collecting! I really enjoy when we’re out collecting the mosquitos because my hobby is already going out and trying to find and identify stuff. I also collect plants and insect specimens, so I already as a hobby like collecting species and identifying them, so this is just doing that but I’m getting paid to do it now!
Do you enjoy your position?
I’d say so! I’m not a very physically active person, so all the biking can be a lot, but I will say, it is a job that I overall enjoy.
What have been some fun/memorable moments?
This wasn’t me, this was one of the other catch basin people, but he got yelled at by a woman, because she thought that bees eat mosquitos, and that we were going to kill the bees by killing the mosquitos!
People come up and talk to us every now and then, it kind of depends, usually they’re curious what we’re doing, and are generally interested. Theres a lot of “thank yous”!
How is the work culture at MMCD?
I like the people, especially the lab people, because they’re all bug nerds like me so I get along with them very well. I do like the catch basin team as well, and I don’t interact as much with a lot of the other people, but I haven’t had any bad experiences with anyone here!
