By JOSEPH KELLARD
In March 2001, Sandy Spector, his wife, Michelle, and their two children moved from the middle of Oceanside to their dream house on Greentree Drive. But with the arrival of warmer weather, the Spectors were introduced to an unexpected and bothersome neighbor -- green flies, which make their home in the marshland in nearby Oceanside Park.
"From Father's Day on, you couldn't sit outside my home one single day because we were surrounded by flies," Spector told Town Councilman Anthony Santino at a town hall meeting last month. "It's incredible. This is a major, major problem."
Echoing Spector's concerns was Ed Matriani, an eight-year resident of Links Drive West, whose neighbor is the Marine Nature Study area, with its attendant marsh. "When we're out in our pool, I'm constantly telling friends or family not to move, and I'm slapping them in the head and the back of the neck," Matriani said. "I cannot bear to be outside my house."
Both men expressed to Santino the same problems: The flies congregate around their homes, making it difficult for them to get in and out of their cars and homes and virtually impossible for them to enjoy relaxing in their backyards, since the flies, which are difficult to kill, bite and leave welts on any human being in their path.
"When you go outside, there's literally anywhere between 50 to 150 flies, and you can't sit in your backyard for a second," Spector said. "They bite you and suck your blood."
"Sometimes they get in your car and you can't get them out," Matriani said. "They get in the car and they swarm you like piranhas."
The flies, which live in the marshes of Nassau County, are protected from mass extermination by federal and state environmental regulations, but the town does everything it can lawfully do to battle the problem, Santino said at the meeting.
Ron Masters, commissioner of the department of conservation and waterways, told Spector and Matriani that in years past, blood-sucking green flies were successfully controlled by DDT, a chemical pesticide that deeply penetrated marshes and killed not only the flies, but other bugs such as mosquitoes. DDT, however, was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1972 because it allegedly harmed animals.
"To date, no company has produced a spray which is acceptable to the Department of Environmental Conservation that can be used in these natural areas," Masters said.
The only form of control that has been found to be "somewhat effective" with green flies, he said, is fly traps. "The problem is ... there's millions of green flies and there's only a few traps out there," he added.
In their efforts to end their ordeals, Spector and Matriani purchased various types of fly traps, but they've found these have caught relatively few -- or no -- flies.
Masters said that when winters are warmer than normal, green flies tend to come out in vast numbers; colder winters produce the opposite effect. Since the past winter was one of the coldest in recent years, there will likely be fewer flies this summer.
"What I have to look forward to the rest of my life living here is either a cold winter or a crappy summer in order to enjoy the quality of my life here?" Spector asked with evident disgust.
Spector told the Herald he had already begun searching for a new home, but he may consider starting a petition drive about the pest problem that he hopes to take to an authority higher than the town.
"To a certain extent, some [environmental regulations] have gotten out of control, where some kind of grass or a little fish is more important than people," Santino said at the meeting.
"It's really a nuisance, and with all the tax dollars we're paying, the fly gets the privilege," Matriani said. "The flies spend more time in my pool than I do."
