Cities Seek Court Ban of Spraying : Medfly: Huntington Beach, Garden Grove and Westminster are rushing to obtain an order halting a malathion assault in their area tonight.

As 400,000 North County residents brace for the biggest malathion assault in Orange County history tonight, lawyers are scrambling to stop it in Southern California’s first legal challenge to the state’s controversial campaign against the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Armed with what they say is evidence of the danger of the pesticide malathion, attorneys for Huntington Beach and Garden Grove are to fly to Sacramento this morning to take the state to court.

They will try in Superior Court to obtain a temporary restraining order to block the spraying of a 36-square-mile region where Medflies have been found. Westminster will join the legal maneuver.

Malathion opposition leaders, who have packed city halls around the area this week with concerns about spraying safety, plan a 4:30 p.m. protest at Garden Grove and Harbor boulevards in Garden Grove.

But these critics, weighing the tight timing and previous failures to halt malathion spraying elsewhere, grudgingly say they expect the spraying to go on as scheduled, beginning at 9 p.m. over parts of nine cities.

“Right now, we have to assume the spraying’s going to go on,” conceded Garden Grove’s Mollie Haines, who has helped organize opposition. “But we want to make sure we can stop it the next time.”

And so the sometimes-feverish preparations for the spraying began Wednesday.

Residents rushed to local hardware stores in search of protection for their cars, gobbling up $3.49 rolls of plastic and more elaborate $80 car covers. State officials say that while the malathion mixture can’t hurt people, the sticky protein bait used to lure flies can tarnish cars.

“We’re all sold out--all 200 rolls (of plastic) gone,” said Dennis Anderson, manager of Builder’s Emporium in Garden Grove. “All the stores in the spray area are trying to order more, because we knew it would be a hot item.”

Elsewhere, county agriculture workers on the local Medfly hot line ((714) 447-7118) were deluged with more than 600 calls Wednesday from residents wanting to know where, when and how the spraying would take place.

In Santa Ana, where some residents are organizing an anti-malathion group, about a dozen people called City Hall with concerns but were told to look to state officials for answers.

“At the local level, there’s very little we can do,” said Jill Arthur, a services administrator for the Santa Ana City Council. “We’re powerless in this issue.”

Santa Ana officials do, however, plan to provide free parking tonight at the Fiesta Market Place garage, 300 East 5th St., for residents who do not have car covers.

School officials in the spray area, reacting to the concerns of some parents, began their own preparations.

At the Garden Grove Unified School District, which is almost entirely within the spray area, staff members are not expected to cover most outdoor equipment before the spraying, Superintendent Ed Dundon said. However, they will be told to hose down and clean them afterward, in keeping with state recommendations.

“We’re just going to do everything the state has told us to do,” Dundon said. “We’re going to go along with their statements that this stuff is not harmful and take some precautions. But we’re neophytes in this, so we’ll be a lot more aware how to deal with this Friday morning.”

In Westminster, about half of which is in the spray region, Assistant Supt. Ronald H. Fraser of the Westminster Unified School District said: “We have alerted all of our people to the spraying and told our night custodians to have everything under cover that they possibly can.”

Acknowledging that the spray plans have been “a headache” for school officials, Fraser said: “We are concerned and we’re taking all the precautions we can.”

All the planning may be moot if a judge in Sacramento agrees to block the spraying. But history is not on the side of malathion foes.

State officials, pointing to the courts’ consistent refusal to block Northern California sprayings during the 1981 Medfly infestation, say they have wide latitude to take severe measures during emergencies.

State officials assert that the aerial spraying is the only means available to halt the Medfly infestation and prevent it from doing widespread damage to California’s $16-billion agricultural industry.

The spraying poses no health risk, state officials have said repeatedly.

Nonetheless, officials in the cities that decided this week to take the state to court--Huntington Beach, Garden Grove and Westminster--said they are optimistic about their chances in Sacramento, where they decided to file their case to save time.

“I think we’ve got a real good chance,” Westminster City Atty. Richard D. Jones said. “What we’re going to do is to force the state of California to justify the intrusion of this spraying and its safety.”

Huntington Beach city attorneys, preparing the case, plan to present written declarations from several U.S. health specialists to question malathion’s safety. They were awaiting a few of those statements late Wednesday.

“Our fax machine’s going to be working overtime (Wednesday) night,” Deputy City Atty. Robert C. Sangster said.

In addition to the safety questions, city attorneys said they may attack the procedure used by the state in its spraying policy, including the lack of door-to-door notifications in Vietnamese and the inclusion in the spray zone of areas where Medflies were not found.

The state has found two fertile Medflies in Garden Grove and Westminster since December. Under state protocol, that prompted state officials to decide last week to spray a large area around and between those finds and distributed notices in Spanish and English to every resident.

While spraying has been more widespread in the Los Angeles area during the current infestation, the Garden Grove area is just the second to undergo aerial applications in Orange County. Parts of Brea, Fullerton and La Habra have already been sprayed four times, most recently Monday night.

Times staff writer Lily Eng contributed to this report.