Malathion Spraying Isn’t Over

Agricultural officials reported Wednesday that they have found three fertile Mediterranean fruit flies in La Habra Heights, so close to the Orange County border that they will have to spray a new part of North County with pesticide next week.

The new discoveries also increase the likelihood that state officials will have to again spray a separate, 10-square-mile area of North County that was treated just last week with malathion, a prospect that had seemed unlikely, officials said.

The three La Habra Heights trappings--together with one new Medfly found in Lakewood in southeast Los Angeles County and four more in the already infested San Gabriel Valley--intensified fears over the rapid spread of the crop-destroying pest, which ravaged the state’s agricultural economy in 1981.

State officials are expected to determine the boundaries for the new sprayings in the San Gabriel Valley, Lakewood and La Habra Heights areas today.

Los Angeles and Orange County agricultural officials said that the La Habra Heights spraying, scheduled for Tuesday in a 16-square-mile area around that city, would likely hit a small section of northwest La Habra in northern Orange County.

The section of Orange County now being targeted was not in the 10-square-mile sector of La Habra, Brea and Fullerton that was sprayed last week in the first aerial assault on the Medfly in county history, officials said.

Nonetheless, Orange County deputy agricultural commissioner Frank Parsons said, “This raises the possibility that (state Department of Food and Agriculture officials) will have to go back and spray the Brea region a second time, but we won’t know for sure until later.”

“This just doesn’t bode well,” Parsons said of the La Habra Heights finds. “These are additional flies that we hoped we would never see. They just add to our problems and make them more complex.”

Added Orange County entomologist Nick Nisson: “It’s not good news.”

The new discoveries came as five top Medfly experts from throughout the country gathered in Los Angeles to develop new strategies in what so far has been a losing struggle to contain the pest. The scientists will present their recommendations to state and county agricultural officials responsible for running the eradication effort today.

“This continues to be disappointing and disheartening,” said Bill Edwards, deputy Los Angeles County agricultural commissioner. “We obviously still do not have a handle on this.”

The current infestation can be traced back to August, when a fly was trapped near Dodger Stadium. Since then, the pests have been detected in a string of communities stretching from the San Fernando Valley to northern Orange County.

The first and only Orange County detection to date came Nov. 17 with the discovery of a single pregnant Medfly in a guava tree in Brea. Local agricultural officials had hoped that last week’s malathion spraying in North County would solve the problem.

“The proximity (of the new find) certainly raises problems for us. There are all kinds of possibilities that we’ll have to consider,” county entomologist Nisson said after meeting with other agricultural staff to discuss the findings.

A total of 211 Medflies have been found so far around the Southland. As a result, 253 square miles of largely residential neighborhoods, with more than 1 million people, have been sprayed.

State officials insist that the mixture of malathion and insect bait used in the sprayings poses no health hazards to humans.

State and county officials received bad news on another front Wednesday. They were told that the latest infestation has been exacerbated by glitches in a sterile fly production facility in Hawaii.

Sterile flies are used to breed the wild population out of existence as an alternative to repeated aerial sprayings. The production problems mean that officials have little choice but to increase the pesticide spraying.

THREE MEDFLIES FOUND ACROSS THE COUNTY LINE Three medflies were found in La Habra Heights, just over the Orange County line.

OLD MALATHION SPRAY AREA A 10-square-mile area of La Habra, Brea and Fullerton was sprayed with a malathion mixture last week after a single Medfly was found in Brea.