Pregnant Medfly Found in Garden Grove : Agriculture: Latest discovery dashes hopes that county had seen the last of the crop-destroying pest. Officials say new sprayings of malathion in the affected area are very probable.

A pregnant Mediterranean fruit fly was trapped this week in an orange tree, creating a new target for pesticide spraying and quashing hopes that Orange County had seen the last of the crop-attacking pest.

The female fly was discovered 10 miles south of the spot in Brea where a pregnant Medfly was discovered Nov. 17, causing agriculture officials to worry that the fly may be heading toward the South County heart of Orange County’s $225-million agriculture industry.

State policy dictates that the discovery of a pregnant Medfly be answered with up to a dozen malathion sprayings in the immediate area. Agriculture officials made no decision on the issue Thursday. But they said there will very probably be aerial applications of the malathion-bait mixture in the area around the latest trapping, near the intersection of Harbor and Garden Grove boulevards.

The area would be the second in Orange County to undergo spraying. After discovery of the pregnant Medfly in Brea, the first such trapping ever in Orange County, the state launched pesticide applications in an eight-square-mile area that includes parts of Brea, La Habra and Fullerton. The spraying there may last through the summer as part of the state’s stepped-up, $25-million effort to eradicate the pest.

The Garden Grove find significantly broadens a swath of infestation that has seen repeated discoveries of fertile Medflies in parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties since summer. Officials call it the worst Medfly attack since a 1981 infestation ravaged the state’s agriculture.

The malathion sprayings over about 300 square miles around the Southland in recent months have sparked concern among some Southland environmentalists, politicians and residents. They worry that the pesticide may harm humans despite assurances from the state that it is safe.

But many residents in the quiet neighborhood of modest, one-story tract houses around the Garden Grove find seemed to take the prospect of aerial sprayings in stride Thursday.

“It’s better to spray than to have the flies around,” offered resident Cecilia Broughton.

Harold Bauman added that he has used the pesticide for about two decades in his back yard, with no qualms about safety. “I’ll cover my things up and let them spray as much as they want,” he said. State officials caution that the spray mixture can stain cars and lawn furniture.

The Garden Grove fly was found late Wednesday in a trap set up in a resident’s orange tree, officials said. It was not until Thursday morning that entomologists at the Medfly Project headquarters in El Monte determined the insect was in fact pregnant, with partially developed eggs.

The news was taken grimly by Orange County agriculture officials.

“There was a lot of disappointment. We were hoping the situation had stabilized in Orange County,” said Frank Parsons, county deputy agriculture commissioner. “Anytime a pregnant Medfly is found it’s obviously cause for concern.”

The find came relatively near the early December trapping of a fertile but non-pregnant female in Westminster.

“That was an indication that there might have been problems, and we got some more traps down there to see,” said Aurelio Posadas of the state’s Medfly project. “Now this tells us we probably do have an infestation there and we better to something about it.”

While county agriculture officials awaited a final decision on spraying, they began to place several thousand more Medfly bait traps in a 169-square-mile area around the Garden Grove site in an effort to track the infestation.

They will also be doing ground applications with hand sprayers, as well as stripping of fruit trees the fly commonly inhabits, to check for damage, Parson said.

The Medfly find may also prompt a quarantine on fruit from the area, forcing growers to agree to certain precautions before exporting produce, Parsons said. The Garden Grove area is home to more growers than the Brea area but still pales in comparison to the agriculture-rich regions in the southern part of the county, he added.

“This is farther south than anything we’ve found so far,” said Pat Minyard, program supervisor for the state’s pest detection unit in Sacramento.

“For the most part, people are looking at this going, ‘Oh, damn,’ but in any kind of an eradication program, you have to be ready for the unexpected,” Minyard said. “You can’t be pessimistic about it.”

While some scientific experts have expressed concern that the current eradication efforts may be futile, state officials insist that the aerial malathion applications are a safe and effective way to handle the problem.

The release of sterile Medflies into the region, aimed at infiltrating and eventually killing off the population, is another commonly accepted eradication tack. But there is a current shortage of sterile flies.

Justifying their far-ranging eradication efforts, agriculture officials point to the 1981 infestation in Northern California as evidence of the threat. They say the Medfly, preying on more than 260 varieties of produce, cost the agriculture industry about $100 million by laying eggs under the fruit’s skin and producing maggots.

Staff writer Shelby Grad contributed to this story.