O.C. City Acts to Bar Spraying; Protests Grow

In the strongest move taken so far by any Orange County community faced with Medfly aerial spraying, the Huntington Beach City Council voted Monday night before a cheering crowd to seek a court order prohibiting pesticide spraying over any portion of the city.

Angry residents also turned out en masse in two other Orange County communities targeted for malathion spraying. In Garden Grove, about 180 people showed up at the City Council meeting to voice their concerns, and in Brea about 70 people held up protest signs at Imperial Highway and Brea Boulevard hours before helicopters were to launch the fourth round of spraying there.

The Huntington Beach council unexpectedly voted to seek a temporary restraining order after passing a resolution that questioned the necessity of the aerial spraying for the Mediterranean fruit fly. That resolution also passed 7 to 0.

Medfly helicopters have not been grounded for reasons other than bad weather during the current infestation, observers said.

Councilman John Erskine made the motion to seek the court order, and an audience of about 200 people broke into applause.

Erskine said he was concerned that the state had not thoroughly informed communities and residents about the possible dangers of the pesticide. “In order to get at the process of this, I think we should asked the city attorney to seek injunctive relief,” Erskine said.

The first of perhaps 12 sprayings are scheduled to begin Thursday night in part of Huntington Beach and most of Garden Grove. They are among nine cities, covering 36 square miles and nearly 200,000 people, in a spray zone created last week by the state after the discovery of a pregnant Medfly in Garden Grove on Jan. 10. The other cities are Cypress, Anaheim, Stanton, Santa Ana, Westminster, Orange and Los Alamitos.

At an emotional hearing on the issue before the Garden Grove City Council, top county health and agricultural officials sought to defend the aerial spraying, calling it a safe, effective and necessary means of ridding the area of the crop-destroying pest.

“They’re not spraying enough stuff on anybody that it’s a health hazard,” insisted Thomas J. Prendergast, county health administrator.

But such assurances from Prendergast and deputy Orange County Agricultural Commissioner Frank Parsons met with occasional hisses from an overflow crowd of about 180 residents, as well as tough questions and open skepticism from some Garden Grove officials.

“So I guess whatever the government says is good for us--we’ve got to go along with them,” quipped Councilman J. Tilman Williams.

Councilman Raymond T. Littrell questioned the logic of leaving some agricultural areas, as well as tourist spots such as Disneyland, just outside the spray boundary, while thousands of residents will have to deal with the spraying. “Most people really have a problem with being violated like this, especially when it doesn’t seem to be solving the problem,” Littrell said.

Residents, some of whom attended a demonstration before the hearing, carried signs in the audience reading “Stop Poisoning Us,” “Remember Agent Orange” and “Clean Air Now.” Speaker after speaker appealed to the council to help stop the spraying.

But Councilman Frank Kessler responded bluntly that the city has no power over the spraying campaign, prompting boos from the crowd. He and two other council members refused last week to oppose the state policy, but Councilman Littrell tried Monday night to persuade them to reverse that vote.

Since the first Medfly find in Orange County in November, many officials have accepted spraying as necessary, given the danger posed to the state’s agriculture--valued at $225 million in Orange County and $16 billion statewide--if the Medfly were left unchecked.

Many residents, too, said initially that they would rather not have to cover their cars and listen to noisy helicopters overhead but understood the need. Few called local or state officials to complain.

But as as the malathion spraying has expanded and intensified in Orange County, so, too, has public concern over the health and environmental implications.

A small band of protesters earlier this month in Brea helped persuade the City Council there to pass a resolution urging the state to consider options for fighting the Mefly other than aerial pesticide spraying.

The turnouts of residents Monday night were the largest to date in Orange County in opposition to the state’s controversial, $25-million effort to eradicate the Medfly.

In Brea, where about 70 picketers held up signs Monday night, Rich Hall, 25, pointed to his 3-week-old son in his wife’s arms. “I don’t want him breathing that garbage,” he said.

Hall said he lives on the border of malathion spraying in Fullerton and worries what the insecticide could do if inhaled.

“They say malathion takes the paint off your car. Then what does it do to your body?” he said.

Julie Moore, 38, said she hasn’t participated in a protest since her college days. But her anger over continued malathion spraying over her home in La Habra brought her out to protest, she said, adding that Monday’s spraying was the fourth time over her La Habra neighborhood.

“I don’t like the idea that we’re being doused with poison,” Moore said. “It’s an infringement of our rights as citizens to have poison dumped on us without our consent.”