Open Marsh Water Management (OMWM) refers to the practice of controlling the mosquito population in salt marshes by creating an appropriate habitat for the natural enemies of the mosquitoes; and by reducing flooding in areas that are not wet on an ordinary basis—thus reducing an environment that would support mosquitoes but not their predators. Without use of chemicals that might be harmful to the natural resources surrounding the water body, as well as harmful to wildlife and humans, OMWM calls on nature's own ecological balance in order to successfully alter the pest—mosquito. The techniques were eventually employed by individuals and municipalities in order to control mosquitoes even in their own backyards, no matter how far that might be from tidal wetlands.

Before this plan was developed, and first used in New Jersey to control the mosquito problem in their tidal...