FORT WORTH — At 5:30 p.m. on a beautiful August night, it's just the right time of day for 8-year-old Georgia Baker to hang on the front porch and paint with her parents, Amy and Travis.
It's also just the right time of the day for mosquitoes to join them.
"Especially this time of the day, they're everywhere," Amy said.
Amy says the threat of West Nile Virus, or WNV, keeps them constantly applying bug spray to Georgia.
"It is on my mind," she said. "I don’t want her to get sick."
With 282 WNV-positive mosquito pools in Tarrant County, and eight human cases — double what the county saw at this time last year— it's also on the minds of county officials.
"The data continues to look bad," said Vinny Taneja, the county's public health director.
So bad, that Taneja went before Commissioners Court Tuesday and suggested something the county's never done before.
"Last option, I know it's not a popular option, we need to consider aerial spraying," he said at the meeting.
It's a pricier option than ground-spraying; it could run up to $3 million if the entire county is sprayed from the sky. But it addresses the concern that existing methods aren't cutting it.
"He saw an additional spike this week," Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley saidof Taneja. "He continues to be concerned."
Whitley says he's taking Taneja's recommendations seriously. He says the county will now talk to each of its 41 jurisdictions to find out if they want to participate. If they don't, Whitley says the planes can avoid those areas.
"These folks who are doing the spraying have the ability to be pretty specific," Whitley said.
Officials recently told News 8 the aerial insecticides are not harmful to your health or the ecosystem, which is a concern for Amy Baker.
"At the same time, I don’t want my baby to get sick either," she said.
The topic and new data will be addressed once again at Commissioners Court next Tuesday.