https://www.americancityandcounty.com/wp-content/themes/acc_child/assets/images/logo/footer-logo.png
  • Home
  • Co-op Solutions
  • Commentaries
  • News
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Podcast
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Resources
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Events
    • How to Contribute
    • Municipal Cost Index – Archive
    • Equipment Watch Page
    • American City & County Awards
  • Magazine
    • Back
    • Digital Editions
    • Reprints & Reuse
    • Advertise
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Statement
    • Terms of Service
American City and County
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • Co-op Solutions
  • Commentaries
  • News
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Podcasts
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Events
    • How to Contribute
    • American City & County Awards
    • Municipal Cost Index
    • Equipment Watch Page
  • Magazine
    • Back
    • Digital Editions
    • Reprints & Reuse
    • Subscribe to GovPro
    • Manage GovPro Subscription
    • Advertise
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Stament
    • Terms of Service
  • newsletter
  • Administration
  • Economy & Finance
  • Procurement
  • Public Safety
  • Public Works & Utilities
  • Smart Cities & Technology
acc.com

Public Works & Utilities


Keeping Newport Beach’s birds at bay

Keeping Newport Beach’s birds at bay

Newport Beach, Calif., recently had its hands full with a pesky bird problem. The city sought help from Antimite Termite and Pest Control to rid pigeons and sparrows from a maintenance yard.
  • Written by American City & County Administrator
  • 24th February 2011

Editor’s note: Governments are tasked with bird control as part of their pest management efforts. Birds, their droppings and nesting materials can cause health risks to humans and create other problems on public buildings and grounds. The following is the first of a two-part series on bird control in local and state government. The first part shows how the California community of Newport Beach developed a bird control program in a maintenance yard.

The second part has advice from Cameron Riddell for local and state government officials on how and where to start if their community or facility has a bird problem. Riddell is president of Carson, Calif.-based Bird Barrier America, Inc., an inventor and manufacturer of bird repellent products. — Michael Keating

Southern California’s Orange County is known for many things, Disneyland and “Real Housewives” to name just two. But a less entertaining OC phenomenon took center stage recently: pest birds.

Newport Beach, Calif., recently had its hands full with a pesky bird problem. The city sought help from Chino Hills, Calif.-based Antimite Termite and Pest Control to rid pigeons and sparrows from a maintenance yard, where it houses and repairs garbage trucks and other service vehicles and equipment. Keeping the property free of birds was difficult because of the open nature of the building; birds roosted on beams supporting the warehouse ceiling, and left droppings and nesting materials on the trucks and gear below.

City employees were complaining to their supervisors about bird droppings on the equipment and surrounding floor — and none of them felt comfortable picking up equipment from the storage facility. Aside from damaging morale, the excessive bird droppings damaged the surfaces of the vehicles and equipment, and created an unhealthy work environment.

“Trash trucks, and the resulting amount of edible debris, are, not-surprisingly, a huge attractant for birds,” says Antimite Pest Control’s Jack Kurtzberg, a 24-year industry veteran. “Why would the birds want to leave? It makes our job very challenging, as we know we have to implement solutions in which the deterrent is even stronger than the attractant.”

The city asked for Antimite Pest Control’s help because the company had successfully bird-proofed the maintenance yard in the past. After some recent remodeling, new sections of the facility required treatment to prevent pest birds from roosting and nesting. “The municipality was proactive; their remodel budget included bird-proofing for the new structure,” explains Kurtzberg.

Netting was one tool the city used to bird-proof the facility, says Mark Harmon, director of the Municipal Operations Division for the city. “When we had the new roof installed, we replaced the netting. It was quite old.” He estimates the cost of the netting at about $6,000, which is a small percentage of the division’s operations budget. The netting, says Harmon, has effectively prevented the birds from roosting and dirtying the service vehicles below.

Kurtzberg surveyed the situation and chose StealthNet, a bird exclusion net product from Carson, Calif.-based Bird Barrier. Because the Newport Beach structure is open on the sides and prone to ongoing pest bird issues, the solution needed to permanently exclude birds from unwanted areas while not harming them.

The Antimite team of four installers mounted perimeter cable around the inside of the warehouse and along the beams to support the ¾-inch black StealthNet. “The most difficult aspect of the job was gaining access to the areas that required netting. A chain link fence separated one section of the building. There were also supports that extended up to the ceiling, around which we had to install the net,” says Kurtzberg. “We used scissor lifts for access.” The project took 100 man-hours to complete, and the netting will last a decade or more.

Kurtzberg explains that bird proofing is not for the meek. “It requires knowledge of seasonal bird nesting and migration patterns and species-specific behavior patterns as well as the day-to-day work demands of the area to be netted. Each job is custom; proper products and installation techniques are chosen with an expert eye to create one-time, 100 percent solutions.”

Before crews installed the netting, the city would devote as many as 100 hours each month cleaning bird droppings off equipment and surrounding areas. The continuous cleanup efforts were costly in time, cleaning chemical expenses and worker morale. Risk of disease and other safety risks were also a concern when cleaning up after the birds.

The city is satisfied with the bird-control solution and has asked Antimite to bid on another pest control project at the same site. Now that the maintenance yard bird problems have been solved, Harmon’s team at the Municipal Operations Division can focus on other Newport Beach challenges.

Related Stories

  • Part 2: Bird control tips for government agencies
  • Bird deterrent

Tags: News Public Works & Utilities

Related


  • How Philadelphia is aiming for zero waste
    The city of Philadelphia has long collected data on city properties’ waste generation and leveraged it to improve waste management, but now it’s honing in on the commercial sector too, realizing this will be crucial to hitting Philly’s zero waste targets. Today it runs a voluntary program where both municipal and commercial operations do detailed […]
  • Florida county announces successful test of Motorola Solutions’ cloud-based P25 core technology
    A Florida county recently announced the completion of a successful test of Motorola Solutions’ CirrusCentral Core, the cloud-based secondary core for ASTRO 25 P25 systems that is designed to provide redundant reliability to the land-mobile-radio (LMR) network without the costs associated with a physical secondary core site. In Sumter County, Fla., the absence of a […]
  • How the City of Fullerton navigated adding candidates to ballots remotely
    This time last year, we were all looking forward to 2020: the start of a new decade and big elections (federally and locally) were just a few of the things we were excited about as we closed out the year. Little did we know, the beginning of the end of “normal” would happen two month […]
  • D.C. police begin identifying Capitol rioters
    Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to identify the supporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “MPD seeks assistance in identifying persons of interest responsible for Unlawful Entry offenses that occurred yesterday on US Capitol Grounds, 100 block of 1st […]

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your American City and County account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • Cleveland launches program to create circular rconomy
  • Shared governance: How pandemic partnerships can lead to progress and offer promise
  • Will digital transformation of city procurement hold up beyond the pandemic?
  • Minneapolis cuts millions from police budget

White papers


How a unified HR system helps one public safety organization manage crews, payroll, and more in a single platform

7th January 2021

Your Roadmap to COVID-19 Funding

18th December 2020

The One Where Everyone Wins: A Mutually Beneficial Contracting Method

10th December 2020
view all

Events


PODCAST


Young Leaders Episode 4 – Cyril Jefferson – City Councilman, High Point, North Carolina

13th October 2020

Young Leaders Episode 3 – Shannon Hardin – City Council President, Columbus, Ohio

27th July 2020

Young Leaders Episode 2 – Christian Williams – Development Services Planner, Goodyear, Ariz.

1st July 2020
view all

Twitter


AmerCityCounty

The latest episode The Young Leaders Podcast focuses on Cyril Jefferson. Cyril is the youngest African American to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

27th October 2020
AmerCityCounty

Hillsboro, Oregon is pioneering a new #renewableenergy generation technology through a partnership with… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

27th October 2020
AmerCityCounty

The impact of the #COVID19 pandemic on #telework was swift and profound. Now, the big question is whether – and to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

26th October 2020
AmerCityCounty

Get ready for the can't-miss webinar on how to kickstart your efficiency improvement plan with Luke Anderson of… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

26th October 2020
AmerCityCounty

Among all states headed into the 2020 general election, which ones have voting populations that are the most demogr… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

26th October 2020
AmerCityCounty

We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts in our readership survey to help us shape future content so that we c… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

23rd October 2020
AmerCityCounty

See how cities different approaches to distribute masks in their communities >> spr.ly/6010GAPLa

23rd October 2020
AmerCityCounty

While #facialrecognition is a powerful tool that can improve law enforcement efficiency, that doesn’t necessarily t… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

23rd October 2020

Newsletters

Sign up for American City & County’s newsletters to receive regular news and information updates about local governments.

Resale Insights Dashboard

The Resale Insights Dashboard provides model-level data for the entire used equipment market to help you save time and money.

Municipal Cost Index

Updated monthly since 1978, our exclusive Municipal Cost Index shows the effects of inflation on the cost of providing municipal services

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our digital audience? Learn more here.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • IWCE’s Urgent Communications
  • IWCE Expo

WORKING WITH US

  • About Us
  • Contact Us

FOLLOW American City and County ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookies Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2021 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X