Supervisor Stanton Casts Lone Vote Against Spraying for Medfly

Breaking with his counterparts in Los Angeles and Orange counties, Supervisor Roger R. Stanton on Tuesday became the first member of either board of supervisors to formally oppose the state’s pesticide war on the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Stanton was the only member of the Orange County board not to vote for renewal of the declaration of a Medfly state of emergency. The declaration amounts to moral support for the state’s program of malathion spraying, and supervisors in Los Angeles and Orange counties previously have approved the declarations unanimously, according to officials in both counties.

Stanton dismissed the state’s aerial assault on the Medfly as a “simplistic cop-out” for combatting the pest that ravaged California crops in 1981 and showed up in Los Angeles and Orange counties late last year. Stanton, citing a 1988 federal Environmental Protection Agency order for further testing of malathion, said too many questions about the pesticide’s health and environmental effects remain.

“I’m disappointed that since the early 1980s we haven’t come up with a different way to fight these flies,” Stanton said. “That’s your alternative? Continuing to spray an entire community with a pesticide to get a couple of flies?”

Opposing the state’s malathion program would be an expensive--and empty--gesture, other county officials said.

Even without the Board of Supervisors’ approval, the state has the authority to spray malathion wherever the agricultural experts deem necessary, according to county officials. Currently, the state is spraying about 10 square miles in northern Orange County as well as sections of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Santa Clara counties.

If Orange County refused to declare a state of emergency, the action would block state funding and the county would have to pay for the malathion program, according to the county’s legal staff.

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, a vocal supporter of the program, said the issue is not “to spray or not to spray.” The issue, he said, “is whether to pay or not to pay.”

Stanton noted that questions raised about the pesticide in an EPA bulletin two years ago remain unanswered.

In January, 1988, federal environmental regulators called for further review of the pesticide because of “data gaps” in the research and concerns over the pesticide’s potential hazardous effects on ground water and fish and other aquatic life. The agency also said that some of the research into malathion’s effects on humans was flawed and should be repeated.

In a letter to state agricultural officials last November, however, EPA officials described the additional research ordered as routine for all chemicals approved by the agency before 1984.

Orange County Agricultural Commissioner James D. Harnett said he planned to give Stanton a copy of the EPA letter, which he received from state officials, at a meeting today to discuss malathion and other Medfly control efforts.

Stanton, however, remained unmoved by the arguments.

“I’m not the expert on this, but if we weren’t supposed to be in the decision-making loop, it wouldn’t be before us,” he said. “I’d be delighted if I’m proven to be incorrect to have concerns, but I don’t see the proof yet.”