El Nino May Depart, but Its Effects Could Be Around for Years

Tired of the effects of El Nino?

Just wait until we get to the aftereffects.

Increases in allergies, rodents, wildfires, mosquitoes, coyotes and grocery bills are probably in the offing, according to experts, as the consequences of this El Nino season are felt over the next few months and even years.

To be fair, there will also be a few good effects, including spectacular lake fishing and wondrous displays of wildflowers.

But history warns that the harmful aftereffects could be quite serious. The last reported cases in Los Angeles County of both the plague, carried by rodents, and human encephalitis, carried by mosquitoes, occurred in 1984, the year after the last major El Nino.

* Allergies: “It’s going to be ‘Springtime for Allergists,’ ” predicted Dr. Bernard Geller, a Santa Monica allergist and professor at the USC Medical School. Geller can literally see it coming.

“Those hills surrounding the city are so green,” he said. “It looks like Scotland. And how bad is it in Scotland in the spring? If you have allergies, I wouldn’t recommend a visit.”

A lot of the green up there, Geller said, is rye grass, much of which was planted by foresters to help hold back mudslides on the barren slopes after fires.

“Usually it dies after a short time,” Geller said. “But there is so much water up there to support it, it will be around for a while, and producing pollen.”

* Fires: “The coming [fire] season might not be so bad,” said Capt. Paul Quagliata, head of the brush clearance unit of the Los Angeles Fire Department. The same tall grasses that will make allergy sufferers miserable heighten fire danger only slightly, he said.

But also thriving in the soggy soil are baby scrubs. “The sumac, chamise, the sage--that stuff grows like crazy when it gets enough water,” said Quagliata. That, he said, will bring on a truly long-range effect.

“Next season, in 1999, that brush will be heavy enough to pose a real hazard in the areas where it’s not cleared out.”

* Flora: Dustin Alcala looks upon those same hills and sees only nature’s bounty.

“We are getting an early start to the flowering season,” said Alcala, nursery manager at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, which is devoted to the preservation of native plants.

“The wildflowers will be more abundant, will bloom longer and will set more seeds,” he said. “That creates a nice kind of seed bank. In dry years, there will still be a lot of seed around to germinate. So the effects will go on for a while.”

* Fruits and vegetables: Three crops in California have already taken a hit from the rains--strawberries, asparagus and artichokes. Although the loss is estimated to total about $75 million, the damage might not be permanent.

“They are behind in harvesting those crops, but they might be able to make some of it up later,” said Dave Kranz, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau, the largest trade organization of farmers in the state. “They lost much of the strawberries ready for harvest because the berries soaked up too much water. But later, those same plants can push out more berries that will be fine.”

The final outcome of the agricultural season depends largely on what happens during the next couple of months. “The crops become especially vulnerable as winter makes the transition to spring,” Kranz said. “If we get terrible rains in March, it could be very bad.”

* Lake fishing: Anglers will reap the benefits of El Nino in about three or four years.

“All this rain brings dirt from hillsides into the lakes,” said fisheries biologist Diego Busatto of the state Fish and Game Department. “That sediment is full of nutrients that support the growth of phytoplankton,” on which fish larvae feed. “If there is a lot of phytoplankton, the larvae are much more likely to survive and grow into full-sized fish,” Busatto said.

* Wildlife: An ecosystem stocked with plenty of water means that animals such as coyotes--and the critters they feed on--will have a better than average survival rate. Animals such as deer that eat vegetation are also likely to thrive.

“If next year is a dry one,” said nursery manager Alcala, “it might mean those coyotes and other animals might go looking for all that water they are used to. They might be coming down into town.”

* Mosquitoes: So far, so good. “Mosquitoes like to lay eggs in standing water that has gotten stagnant,” said Frank Hall, chief of the county’s vector management program, which oversees insect control. “The rains we got washed a lot of that water away.”

Of course, when the rains stop and the last of the standing water remains, problems could begin.

In 1984, an outbreak of mosquito-borne encephalitis--also known as brain fever or sleeping sickness--resulted in 26 cases of the disease and six deaths in Southern California. As a result, Los Angeles County began mosquito eradication programs that have been largely successful, Hall said.

* Marine life: Marine biologist Mia Tegner isn’t worried about all the pollution that has washed into the ocean during the storms.

“It provides bacteria and nutrients for kelp beds and other things that live in the ocean at a time when they are starved for nutrients,” said Tegner, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

As for the long term, she foresees an abundance of warm water creatures, such as the spiny lobster and sheepshead, that usually would be found in the ocean well south of L.A. In an El Nino year, “the current brings them up here as larvae, and then they can have a life span of 20 to 30 years” in local waters, she said.

* Rodents: “When the natural areas are very lush and green, the reproduction conditions are good for field rodents,” said Gail Van Gordon, public health entomologist for the county. These field mice and ground squirrels will stay out in the wild until the dry weather comes. “Then they will migrate out of their natural areas to more lush ones,” Van Gordon said.

“That turns out to be landscaped areas.”

As recently as 1996, seven squirrels caught by county officials tested positive for the plague. There were two confirmed human cases here in 1984. The county monitors the squirrel population and uses poisons to cut down the numbers in areas that become overpopulated, she said.