The City Council voted Tuesday to spend $12,000 to be one of two Florida cities where a new system for controlling and killing mosquitoes and biting midges (a.k.a. no-see-ums) will be tested.

Port Richey will join Gainesville in a test study by Biosensory Inc., a Connecticut start-up company developing environmentally friendly means to deal with bloodsucking pests. The city will get the equipment at a big discount and city employees will get training in exchange for Biosensory's getting data on how its products work on no-see-ums.

So far, the company only has anecdotal evidence that its products work on no-see-ums, its president said.

"Our parks will prove that out," City Manager Vince Lupo said. "We'll know very quickly."

Students rally around fading agriculture class

[Times photo: Ron Thompson]
This cow pasture, used by Citrus High's agriculture program, soon may give way to a new baseball field as part of the school's expansion plan.

INVERNESS -- With strip malls and housing developments gobbling up Florida farmland, Citrus County school officials say agriculture classes may soon fall by the wayside, too.

A cow pasture, which sits adjacent to Citrus High School as a bucolic reminder of a disappearing era, is about to be lost to a school expansion plan. And a number of students and parents appealed to the School Board on Tuesday to prevent Inverness Middle School from dropping its agriculture course. Such a move would spell doom for the middle school's popular Future Farmers of America club.

But principal Cindy Staten said that considering she has the only middle school without a dropout prevention class, agriculture might have to be cut.

"Agriculture is the least requested class of the electives," Staten said. More popular are business education, technical education and aeroscience.

The board urged caution in cutting the programs, but Superintendent David Hickey said it should be a school-based decision. Tight budgets force schools to set priorities, he said.

Free mammograms offered after non-minorities complain

BROOKSVILLE -- Mobile mammography units brought in by the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center last week were intended to stem the tide of minority women dying from cancer.

In particular, national studies have shown that African-Americans with breast cancer face more than twice the risk of dying compared with white Americans, mostly because they are diagnosed at more advanced stages of the disease.

But after getting peppered by phone calls from white residents who complained that the program was discriminatory, the Hernando County Health Department decided that free mammograms will now be offered locally to all women 40 and older who meet the proper guidelines.

Health officials had thought the program funding was earmarked for minorities. After receiving a number of calls from angry white residents, the local Health Department called state officials for advice. The state office told them that even though the purpose is to target minority women, non-minorities could not be turned away.

"I don't see it being discriminatory so much as it is trying to address a problem that a particular race of people will have," said Marvin Davies, a former executive director for the state NAACP.

Seawater desalination plant faces second attack

CLEARWATER -- The region's new seawater desalination plant was hit by a second legal challenge Tuesday, but project backers remained optimistic that it will be finished on time.

The citizens group Save Our Bays and Canals filed a challenge, as expected, just hours before the window for such action closed Tuesday. The SOBAC challenge joins one filed last week by the Hillsborough County Commission.

SOBAC questioned the validity of some of the project's scientific data. Several state and federal agencies have concluded that the salt-laden byproduct of the desalination process poses no environmental threat to Tampa Bay, where it will be dumped.

The Hillsborough County Commission did not challenge the science. In fact, their own environmental studies show that the plant poses no threat. It wants to ensure the county would not be liable for the cost of an environmental cleanup.

Pasco County, Tampa Bay Water and the Southwest Florida Water Management District, along with the Water Coalition, a group of builders, apartment and Realtor associations, and area chambers of commerce, have all indicated their intention to intervene to support the plant on the site of a TECO power plant in southern Hillsborough County.

Artist offers to beautify ugly pipe that arcs road

PINELLAS PARK -- An eyesore of a road sign could become a work of art, or at least a little less ugly.

Muralist John Vitale has offered to paint the big brown pipe that arcs across the Park Boulevard-66th Street N intersection. Vitale sees the pipe as a perfect place for a rendering of the sky with birds flitting across it.

Tom Nicholls, the city's traffic director, doubts the wisdom of a mural on the pipe. Pretty pictures might distract drivers, he said.

But Pinellas Park is not discouraging the idea. In fact, city officials have forwarded the suggestion to the state Department of Transportation, which owns the monotube.

For the past couple of weeks, motorists and Pinellas Park residents have been aghast at the $200,000 monotube that holds the light signals and eventually will hold road signs.

The pipe had to be big to hold the weight of the signals and signs and to withstand hurricane-force winds. DOT said it also was the most economical choice, and it is installing similar tubes all over the state, including in Largo and the Suncoast Parkway.

New Sierra Club group spans four counties

Hernando, Citrus, Pasco and Sumter counties all face development pressure from the Suncoast Parkway, Sierra Club members say. Big cities have either tapped the counties' water resources or are looking to do so. And the four are connected by the Withlacoochee River.

Because of their common interests, members in these counties are forming the Naturecoast Group of the Sierra Club.

The Naturecoast members must demonstrate they are committed and capable of sustaining a group. If they prove that during a probationary period, which usually lasts about a year, they will be granted group status, said Beth Connor, who works in the Sierra Club office in St. Petersburg.

The state and national organizations are especially interested in this club's activities, said Joe Murphy of the Sierra Club. If it succeeds in reversing the pattern of overdevelopment found in Pinellas and Pasco counties, it may set an example for the more rural counties to the north.

Coming up this week

Tuesday is the deadline the city gave ucanwatch.com to stop operating out of a Tarpon Springs home or face an $800-a-day fine. The Internet company, which sends provocative images of the home's residents over the World Wide Web, has argued that because its computer server is based elsewhere, it is not a Tarpon Springs business.

Clearwater's new rules on rave clubs go before the City Commission a second time on Thursday. If approved, the new law would close a loophole that had allowed dance clubs that don't sell alcohol to be open all night.

-- Compiled by Times staff writer Sharon Kennedy Wynne

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