TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) – Decades ago, when hay was still harvested on New Jersey’s salt marshes, laborers would drape their cart horses from head to hoof in canvas to shield the animals from biting greenhead flies.

The pesky flies had a sharp bite that could cause the horses to break and run.

The horses and workers have long since faded into yesteryear. But the greenheads flies remain a prolific scourge of Jersey’s back bays, putting a vicious chomp on boaters and sunbathers, and annoying anyone else within striking distance.

“Everybody who lives around here or visits knows how nasty they can be,” said Karen DeRosa, a spokeswoman for the Tuckerton Seaport, which pays a tongue-in-cheek nod to the bugs with an annual festival.

With another fly season in full swing, some state lawmakers hope to help southern New Jersey’s affected communities get the upper hand on the pests.

A bill sponsored by Assemblymen Chris Connors and Brian Rumpf, and Sens. Leonard T. Connors Jr. and Nicholas Asselta would provide $90,000 to the state Department of Environmental Protection to parcel out grants to counties and their respective mosquito control commissions, the lead agencies for battling bugs. The funding proposal was reduced last spring from $250,000 because of the state’s tight finances.

“We know it’s a limited resource, which is why it should be put in the hands of people who deal with biting insects on a daily basis,” Connors said.

The money would be used to develop strategies for controlling the flies or pay for the simple screen-mesh traps commonly used to cut down the fly population. With the Legislature on summer break and the bill still awaiting action, it’s unlikely aid will come in time for this season.

Undaunted by most insect repellents, greenhead flies are a perennial pest from the salt marshes of the Southeast to New England. In New Jersey, they range from the Delaware Bay, around Cape May and north to Ocean County, from late June into September. A good west wind can blow them from the bays to the ocean beaches, where they annoy bathers.

The males are benign, feeding on flower nectar. But the females are out for blood.

“Blood is a very high-energy, high-protein diet,” said Chris Claus, a biologist and park naturalist for Ocean County.

The females have scissorlike mouth parts that tear the skin, making their bite worse than a mosquito’s but less painful than a bee sting. It still raises a welt and a makes a memorable impression.

“Some people go out fishing on bay and turn around and come back in because of the flies,” said Joe Muscolino, whose News & More gift shop in Little Egg Harbor Township is a stone’s throw from Great Bay, a greenhead ground zero.

At the LPGA’s ShopRite Classic, held annually on a Galloway Township golf course near a salt marsh, the flies are often a bigger course hazard than sand traps, ponds or loud spectators. Sometimes, the hush of the crowd as a player prepares to hit gets broken by the slap of a spectator swatting a fly on an exposed arm or leg.

Because of their plentiful numbers, battling the bugs can be tough but not impossible, Claus said. Unlike mosquitoes, which are controlled by targeting the larvae in pools of water, greenheads are much harder to hit since their larvae burrow into the marsh mud. That puts the focus on adult flies, which are captured with traps.

“Traps right now are the only thing we have. Maybe someday, somebody will find a way to control the population in the larval stage. Right now nothing exists to do that that will be environmentally friendly,” Claus said.

Made of plywood, the traps are 3-foot-tall, square tables with a screened upper surface and open bottom. The greenheads fly into one of two cone-shaped collection points, where they eventually die.

The traps can be built for about $50 and are best placed at the edges of marshes and nearby uplands. Rutgers University has used them to measure fly populations.

The money lawmakers want to provide could pay for more traps and shows a commitment to dealing with the problem. It could also lead other organizations to show an interest, Claus said.

“This may be the start of a new horizon of research and control for this species,” Claus said.

AP-ES-07-31-05 1416EDT