Weevil War Vet Targets Medfly

The year was 1982, and the boll weevil, that legendary pest of the South, had infiltrated the cotton fields of California. When those cotton fields get rotten, you can’t pick very much cotton. And so, war was declared.

Five years later, growers and agricultural officials were able to boast of the only successful eradication of the boll weevil anywhere, ever. “It’s one of our pride and joys,” Max Magee, associate director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, recalled fondly.

Leon Spaugy, then the Riverside County farm commissioner, was an “instrumental” veteran of the boll weevil campaign, Magee recalled. Now Spaugy is Los Angeles County’s agricultural commissioner, and his chief foe of the moment is the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Thirty-three years of experience battling boll weevils, Khapra beetles and fruit flies of assorted varieties may help explain why the 53-year-old administrator seems at once confident and wary in discussing the Cerititis capitata that is infesting five separate areas of the county.

The infestation has become so prevalent that two UC Davis entomologists are warning Los Angeles to expect a full-blown infestation. But Spaugy disagrees. He is perplexed--but not alarmed.

On Wednesday, Spaugy announced plans for spraying the pesticide malathion on the most recently detected area of infestation.

Commencing at 9 tonight, three helicopters will spray a 24-square-mile area in the western San Gabriel Valley that includes Alhambra, San Marino, San Gabriel, Temple City, Rosemead, El Monte, South El Monte and Monterey Park. The spraying will last four to six hours, officials say, and residents are advised to either cover their vehicles or wash them the next day to avoid possible paint damage.

The question being posed by the UC Davis experts, in effect, is this: Is Spaugy using a big enough fly swatter?

Spaugy’s announcement Wednesday does not reflect the kind of aggressive attack advocated by UC Davis entomologists Richard Rice and James R. Carey, two members of a five-member state scientific panel that advises farm officials on the Medfly. They have called for a doubling of malathion spraying and trapping efforts, suggesting that the Medfly may become endemic to Los Angeles.

“They don’t have any more evidence than the rest of us,” Spaugy said, noting that the two university scientists are in the minority of officials and advisers involved in the effort.

Spaugy sees the five infestations that have been detected since Aug. 10--ranging from Sylmar in the north to Santa Fe Springs in the south of the county--as separate “introductions.”

If Rice and Carey are right, Spaugy said, “you’d expect to find infestations in close proximity to infestations we have eradicated. But if you look at the map, they’ve hopscotched all over the county. . . . I’ll grant some of these may be fruit carried out of the quarantine areas.”

State agricultural official Magee agreed with Spaugy. Compared to the Santa Clara County Medfly problem in the early 1980s, he added, “You don’t even have an infestation.”

Unlike the boll weevil, Medfly infestations--if detected early--have been killed off relatively quickly with the use of corn syrup bait laced with malathion. The introduction of sterilized male Medflies is also used.

But if the Medfly gets out of control, it poses a much greater risk than the boll weevil. The boll weevil was a problem only with cotton. The Medfly lays its larvae on 260 varieties of fruits and vegetables. An infestation could mean quarantines, fumigations, trade embargoes and higher prices at the grocery store.

Spaugy, who began his career at age 20 at the Riverside County inspection station in Blythe on the California-Nevada border, took over the Los Angeles department last year.

“It seems like longer,” he said, because of the repeated Medfly detections.

Unlike the early 1980s, when the Medfly infestation in Santa Clara County proved to be major political problem for then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., Spaugy sees an unfortunate complacency in the public’s attitude about the Medfly.

Studies have shown the small concentrations of malathion used in spraying are not harmful to humans, he said. But at the same time, quarantine restrictions are frequently ignored.

Los Angeles County supervisors, who oversee Spaugy’s department, have been “very supportive,” he said.

Only once, he said, has a politician called to complain about the spraying.

“Once I explained it was necessary, there was no additional pressure.”