Monday, 20 August 2007 02:00

Amador County Benefits From Gov.’s West Nile Virus Order

slide9A new chapter in the fight against West Nile Virus may raise the stakes for Cities and Counties. A woman is suing the city in which she lives, Chico, for her husband's death from the West Nile virus last year. Ilse Brown has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit seeking $50 million dollars in damages from the City. Brown says that her husband contracted the virus and died last year.
Now, she too has been diagnosed with the illness this summer, and she says that the City of Chico just has not done enough to combat West Nile Virus or the pest that spreads the virus, mosquitoes. Last week Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order providing up to $10 million in additional emergency relief for local mosquito control agencies.  The executive order supplements the emergency proclamation Governor Schwarzenegger signed on August 2 and the more than $1 million in emergency funding awarded last week. The Governor is reacting to the recent explosion in West Nile Virus cases in both humans and animals that rose dramatically in the last few weeks. Although all counties surrounding us have diagnosed cases in either humans or animals our county remains free of the virus , at least for now. The Governor did not leave the county out, however, and the new executive order provides the Amador County Ag Department with $26 thousand plus dollars for mosquito control and $85 hundred dollars for surveillance.