Who we are
Mosquito season on Capitol Hill has gotten bad and we're done complaining about it.
How this started
In early 2026, Michelle Mingrone started looking at the catch basins on her street and thinking: those have to be breeding grounds. What she found when she started asking around was a gap — no clear agency ownership with not much happening on the ground. DC Health performs complaint-based larvicidal treatment, but has 1–2 employees handling this work for the entire city, on top of surveillance and other duties.
So she went down a rabbit hole. Other neighborhoods have tackled this issue without pesticide spraying, combining source reduction, larvicide treatment, and community-wide trap deployment. She emailed Biogents — the manufacturer behind the traps these other neighborhoods have used— to ask about a group discount. Then she sent one listserv post.
Over 1000 households responded in the first week. Turns out we're not alone in our suffering.
What we're doing
The Itty Bitty Mosquito Population Committee is a grassroots DC neighborhood effort working block by block across Capitol Hill and nearby communities. Our approach:
Toss and treat: Eliminating standing water breeding sites in yards, alleys, and shared spaces — including catch basins and Pepco vaults that the city isn't consistently treating
Trap: Deploying BG-GAT traps across the neighborhood, with a group discount for Capitol Hill residents, coordinated for maximum coverage
Organize:100+ block captains spreading the word and making sure as many households as possible are taking the steps that matter
We're not spraying. Pesticides kill indiscriminately — including the natural predators that keep mosquito populations in check — and populations bounce back fast. The lasting approach is to cut off breeding at the source.
Why it might actually work
The key to neighborhood-scale mosquito control isn't any single tactic — it's participation. The more households tossing, treating, and trapping, the less hospitable the entire neighborhood becomes. That network effect is what makes this different from a single household effort.
What's unusual about Capitol Hill and surrounding neighborhoods is the level of engagement. Leading mosquito researchers have taken notice. We're tracking trap locations, catch basin treatments, and mosquito counts across the Hill to measure what's actually working — and build a case for what other communities can replicate.
New here? Start here.
Check out our recent news coverage on WUSA9! And if you have a little more time, watch our community kickoff meeting — Michelle shares the origin story, Dr. Bart Knols (a world-leading mosquito researcher who has designed control programs across the globe) leads a mosquito 101, and we take questions from neighbors. It's the fastest way to understand what we're doing and why.
Mosquitoes picked the wrong hill to die on.
Michelle Mingrone, Founder
Capitol Hill, DC
ittybittymosquitocommittee@gmail.com