Newest Medfly Area to Be Sprayed

Although the new aerial spray zone won’t be determined until next week, state officials confirmed Friday that a second section of the county will soon be doused with malathion as a result of the discovery here of a pregnant Mediterranean fruit fly.

Over the weekend, state officials intend to work out a schedule and boundaries for the sprayings and are expected to announce their plans by Tuesday morning, said Gera Curry, a state agricultural spokeswoman. Officials hope to start spraying before the end of the month.

The pregnant Medfly was trapped Wednesday in an orange tree near the intersection of Harbor and Garden Grove boulevards, about 10 miles south of the spot in Brea where a pregnant fly was discovered Nov. 17. This has worried agriculture officials, who fear that flies might be heading toward South County, the heart of Orange County’s $225-million agriculture industry.

Local environmental groups and at least one Garden Grove City Council member criticized the spraying plan, fearing a health risk despite state assurances that the malathion mixture is safe.

“I don’t think we really know what it does,” Councilman Ray Littrell said. “I have a country-boy background. That tells me that spraying is good for the crops but it ain’t good for the people.”

Randy Toler, head of the Orange County-based Green Party, said his environmental group plans to protest any spraying and will seek a resolution from the Garden Grove City Council urging that the state use alternative methods.

John Connell, a program supervisor for the pest detection unit of the state Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento, said residents could expect the new spraying to occur within a 1.5-mile radius from the site where the fly was found. The boundaries would include about a nine-square-mile area.

Residents could expect 10 to 12 sprayings, possibly lasting through the summer, Curry said. Whenever a pregnant Medfly is discovered, state policy dictates that up to a dozen sprayings be conducted within the immediate area.

State crews will begin ground spraying today of fruit trees within a 200-meter radius of the find, Curry said, but the applications could be called off if it rains. Spraying crews will notify homeowners before they begin, she said.

County agriculture workers Friday were placing several thousand more traps in a 169-square-mile area around the Garden Grove site. Within a one-square-mile area of the find, 100 traps are expected to be placed in the next few days, said Frank Parsons, the county’s chief deputy agriculture commissioner.

Garden Grove Councilman Frank Kessler said that although the spraying will inconvenience residents, city officials have no proof that it poses a health risk. Not to spray, he said, would mean potential destruction of the county’s agriculture business.

“It’s going to be an inconvenience,” Kessler said, “but I don’t think we have a choice. The alternative is unacceptable.”

The area will be the second in Orange County to undergo spraying. After the discovery of a pregnant Medfly in Brea in November, the first such trapping ever in Orange County, the state launched what now has become a series of 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, Curry said.

A second fly was found in early December in Westminster, but it was a less-threatening, non-pregnant female.

Littrell said he is concerned that the Garden Grove City Council won’t be able to take any action before the aerial sprayings begin, and that residents will not be fully informed of what it entails and if there are any significant health risks. He intends to raise the issue at the council’s Monday meeting.

Although state codes require that the spraying plans be submitted to local leaders at least 72 hours in advance, Littrell said he is concerned that state officials might not follow those requirements. The initial decision to spray, he pointed out, was made without consultation with city leaders.

But Pat Minyard, another state spraying official, said the plans will be submitted to Garden Grove leaders next week.

Minyard also said that state officials have no alternative to spraying.

In the past, officials have released sterile Medflies over infestation areas, prompting the fly population to die out after being unable to reproduce. But Minyard said the state has had a shortage of the sterile flies.

“Alternatives have been considered in the overall course of the program,” Minyard said. “The program has grown to a point where we no longer have that option.”

In any case, the spread of the fly farther south into Orange County could create more political conflict over the spraying.

“The more the county is involved, the more the opposition,” Toler of the Green Party said. “The firestorm has spread.”

Toler contended that the latest find proves that spraying simply has not worked, and that future efforts could be futile. The multimillion-dollar cost of eradicating the fly doesn’t justify the potential loss to agriculture, he said.

“It seems to me the Medfly has established itself in the L.A. Basin,” he said. “The Medfly is going to be appearing time and time again.”

But others disagree, saying that the war on the Medfly is winnable. Barbara Buck, a spokeswoman for the Western Growers Assn., based in Irvine, said that not to spray would threaten the agricultural industry as well as consumer prices and the nation’s competitiveness with foreign producers. She added that those markets do not have sanitation codes that are as stringent as the United States’.

“We are sensitive to and understand the nuisance this is to residents,” Buck said, “but we’re in this all together.”