It seems that there is concern in Arizona about mosquitoes spreading the West Nile disease.

The main breeding grounds, in the normally dry and arid state, are backyard swimming pools that have been left unattended because the households were foreclosed on or abandoned.

In order to combat the problem the state has begun breeding a small silver fish than just loves to eat mosquito larvae.

“The abandoned pools become a stagnant little swamp that breeds mosquitoes in the middle of a neighbourhood,” said John Townsend of Phoenix.

“It is an important public health issue to keep the mosquito population down … and the fish are very effective at that,” he said.

The cities in the Phoenix valley have one of the highest foreclosure rates in the United States. In the first three months of this year more than 17 thousand homes were offered up for foreclosure sale.

There are also a large number of homes that have just been abandoned by owners who couldn’t deal with their rising debts.

Townsend says that the Phoenix Zoo has been enlisted to help produce 40 thousand of the mosquito eating fish in the Zoo’s breeding tanks.

The fish are proving to be an attractive alternative to chemicals or pesticides.

“Chlorine is not effective as it is burned off by the sun in a couple of days,” said Daniel Anderson, a city official in Chandler.

“Once the fish are in the pool, we are not concerned about mosquitoes until someone either buys the house or the pool dries up,” Anderson said.

Why didn’t someone just call the pool guy and get him to drain the pool?