Fruit Flies Found in 2 New Areas : Infestation: Boyle Heights discovery brings the Medfly to within a few miles of downtown produce market.

One day after officials decided to significantly escalate aerial pesticide spraying against the Mediterranean fruit fly, more of the crop-munching pests were reported to have been detected Friday in two new Southern California neighborhoods--Boyle Heights and the city of Westminster in Orange County.

The Boyle Heights discovery brings the Medfly within a few miles of downtown Los Angeles’ produce market, but agricultural officials said they have no immediate plans to include the market in a quarantine zone. Such a designation would force owners to cover all fruit with plastic or screens during operating hours but would still allow outside shipments.

“With the latest fly find, the produce market may be included in redrawn quarantine boundaries,” said Bill Edwards, Los Angeles County’s deputy agricultural commissioner. He said the market at Central Avenue and 7th Street was included in a quarantine zone during a small 1983 Mexican fruit fly infestation and “it didn’t create any economic impact.”

He said market operators, who start operations while it is still dark, would have to “move all their produce inside after 10 a.m. because biologically the fly sleeps late. It doesn’t get around and fly until the light gets good. The theory (is that) it wouldn’t present a danger during early morning.”

The Westminster find is “of concern to us” because it is about 10 miles south of Orange County’s other infestation in Brea, said Isi Siddiqui, assistant director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture. He said officials hoped the Westminster fly represented an isolated movement of the pest rather than evidence of another pocket of full-blown infestation.

Because only a single unmated female was found in each of the new neighborhoods, no aerial spraying was ordered. Officials said they will increase trapping in the neighborhoods and only order aerial spraying of malathion if additional flies are found.

The new discoveries come after county and state agricultural officials ordered at least 12 more rounds of aerial pesticide spraying over a wide sector of residential neighborhoods. A team of scientists studying the infestation said Thursday that they expect to find new flies because the ongoing warm weather speeds the Medfly breeding cycle.

Opposition to repeated spraying mounted Friday. The mayor of Monterey Park said she has set up a meeting with Gov. George Deukmejian to urge him to reconsider his support of multiple applications of molasses bait laced with trace amounts of malathion. A Deukmejian spokesman said the governor is willing to meet with local officials, but offered no sign of backing down from his pro-spraying position.

Meanwhile, a coalition of anti-spray groups from Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley promised to protest.

“We have to let the politicians know we do not like this and we do not want this,” said Dan Bender, 28, of Monrovia. He belongs to a newly formed group called Safe Alternatives for Fruit Fly Eradication. The group has managed to bring about 40 to 90 people to staged protests.

The fly trapped was in Boyle Heights in the 3000 block of Eastside Boulevard, just outside an already infested neighborhood.

In addition, two more flies, including a pregnant female, were found in Alhambra and Glassell Park, which already are infested and targeted for multiple doses of malathion.

“As we put more spraying in the areas, we are confident it will take care of the problem,” said Siddiqui, a veteran of California’s 1981 Medfly crisis.

The accelerated pace of spraying, in which applications will be separated by one to three weeks until spring, commences next Tuesday.

A 16-square-mile section of La Habra will receive its first application Tuesday beginning at 9 p.m. On Wednesday, about 12 square miles of North Hollywood, Studio City and Toluca Lake will receive a second round of pesticide. And on Thursday, a 23-square-mile sector encompassing Rosemead, South El Monte and parts of San Marino, Arcadia, Temple City and Monterey Park are slated for what will be a third application there.

From now on, only residents in first-time spray zones will receive notice that low-flying helicopters will apply malathion in their neighborhoods. Agricultural officials advised residents to rely on the media for spray dates.

“We have already hand-delivered over 1 million notices,” said Patrick Minyard, a state agricultural official. “We physically could not continue to do that.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, a vocal opponent to repeated aerial sprays, introduced a motion in the City Council on Friday that urged agricultural officials to reexamine alternatives to the multiple applications.

One option he suggested exploring was the creation of a “Medfly curtain” in an unpopulated belt between Los Angeles and California’s farmlands; the buffer zones would get heavy doses of malathion. Several state and federal entomologists dismissed the idea.

Bill Callison, chief of the state Department of Food and Agriculture’s pest exclusion branch, said the “malathion curtain” would do nothing to prevent travelers from transporting flies into the farm belt in their closed vehicles.

Since the Medfly first reappeared in August, state officials have sprayed roughly 250 square miles, stretching from the San Fernando Valley to northern Orange County and affecting about a million residents.