County Sees 1st Protest of Medfly Spray

Pesticide-spraying helicopters swooped down on the northern tip of Orange County on Tuesday night for the third time in recent weeks as sign-toting protesters mounted the first public opposition in the county to the state’s chemical assault on the Mediterranean fruit fly.

In all, two dozen malathion opponents--some of them longtime environmentalists, others local residents new to activism--brandished placards on a chilly evening to draw attention to an issue that has generated little opposition locally.

“We just need to get more people out there angry about what’s happening,” said Brea resident Greg Seals, who picketed with his wife. “I don’t want my children breathing or even touching this stuff.”

Some rush-hour motorists at the intersection of Imperial Highway and Brea Boulevard honked their horns, waved and gave thumbs-up gestures, in apparent support of the picketers.

But the protesters got less encouragement when five of them addressed the regular meeting of the Brea City Council with their fears about the safety of malathion spraying. The council agreed to consider at a future meeting a resolution recommending that state agricultural officials seek alternatives to aerial spraying.

But Councilman Ron Isles made clear that he considers malathion--the state’s main weapon in its battle against the crop-attacking Medfly--to be “completely safe.”

And Brea Mayor Carrey J. Nelson said in an interview: “I’d be willing to look at any options that don’t involve spraying. But until they find something besides malathion I say let’s go ahead and keep spraying.

“There are no ill effects from malathion that we knew of,” he added.

Still, elected leaders in several Los Angeles County cities hit by malathion spraying have voiced opposition to the state’s strategy. That has not happened in Orange County, and Tuesday’s protest was aimed at changing that.

“We didn’t get quite as many people as expected,” protest organizer Randy Toler said. “But I think it was a successful protest. It shows there is local opposition in Orange County.”

Hours after the Brea protest, state-run helicopters began dumping hundreds of gallons of malathion over a 26-square-mile area of Los Angeles and Orange counties, including about 34,000 homes and businesses in parts of Fullerton, La Habra and Brea.

Rain Tuesday morning threatened to scrub the spraying, but agriculture officials decided to go ahead with spraying plans once skies cleared by mid-afternoon.

The operation, to be repeated perhaps another 10 times in parts of northern Orange County in coming months, was expected to finish by early this morning.

“We know the system by now and everything is very smooth,” Orange County Agricultural Commissioner James Harnett said. “We don’t treat it as routine. But it has certainly become a part of the routine, because we know we’re going to have to do it again and again.”

It was the third aerial application of malathion since late November for most of the eight square miles in Orange County that were targeted in Tuesday night’s spraying.

The North County region, in the immediate area of the Brea guava tree where a pregnant Medfly was discovered Nov. 17, is being sprayed as part of a new state policy to halt the spread of the Medfly.

State officials, acknowledging that they might have originally underestimated the severity of the infestation, decided last month to drastically step up the spraying schedule to include applications once every 21 days in infested areas of Southern California. Warmer weather could bring spraying every week.

Despite some criticism from environmental activists, state agriculture officials say that the aggressive spraying campaign is needed to avoid a repeat of 1981, when the Medfly’s spread was said to have cost the state nearly $200 million in eradication efforts and damaged, larvae-ridden produce.