Supervisors Waver, Still Back Spraying : Medfly: Malathion foes enlist a new ally--the homeless--who said they were not prepared for the aerial spraying and were caught out in the open.

Besieged by pleas from malathion-wary residents, a split Board of Supervisors on Tuesday refused to end a “state of emergency” over the Mediterranean fruit fly problem. But for the first time, the board voiced formal reservations about whether aerial spraying is the best way to combat the infestation.

Even as the board declined to oppose the state over the emotional Medfly issue, critics were enlisting the newest--and perhaps unlikeliest--citizen warriors in the malathion battle.

Lawyers for the Legal Aid Society of Orange County took testimony in Garden Grove’s Pioneer Park for three hours from a dozen homeless people who said they were caught unprepared by last month’s spraying. The lawyers plan to file a lawsuit later this week to try to halt the applications until the state provides a shelter for perhaps hundreds of homeless people.

The sprayings “tore my stomach up and I got chills and nausea,” said Gilbert Arndt, huddled in an alley while sharing a cigarette and a quart of beer with two friends.

Arndt said he hopes that the depositions that he and other homeless people gave to Legal Aid lawyers, complaining of illnesses that ranged from nausea and vomiting to bad dreams, may help stop up to a dozen sprayings that are planned through summer in parts of nine cities around Garden Grove.

“We’re a little strange, but we’re not crazy,” Arndt said. “In my opinion, what it boils down to is if enough people complain, they got to listen.”

So many people complained at Tuesday’s packed Board of Supervisors’ meeting that the board met through the lunch hour for an unusually long, five-hour session on the renewal of the county’s Medfly state of emergency.

But in the end, after hearing directly from state officials for the first time about their controversial efforts to thwart the fruit fly, three of the five supervisors told the malathion protesters that the county has no power to stop the state’s Medfly assault.

However negligible their practical power, the supervisors’ formal stances on the controversial issue carry tremendous symbolic importance at a time of rising protests in Orange County over the potential health hazards posed by aerial applications of malathion.

Acknowledging that political reality, the supervisors agreed to qualify their emergency declaration with an amendment, saying that their vote “does not constitute an endorsement” of malathion spraying and urging the state to “aggressively pursue alternatives.”

The protesters, bearing signs at the meeting that read “Stop Poisoning Us” and similar messages, had wanted more.

One by one, more than 30 people from Orange County, as well as some from Los Angeles and Riverside counties, voiced their fears about the pesticide’s toxicity and urged the county to take an active role in stopping its use over their homes in coming weeks.

An eight-square-mile area of Brea, La Habra and Fullerton is to be sprayed on Feb. 12. A 36-square-mile area around Garden Grove and Westminster, home to many of the protesters at the board meeting, is scheduled for its second spraying on Feb. 15, pending the outcome of a hearing that day in Sacramento on a lawsuit brought by several local cities.

“It is very, very frustrating to be told that we are voiceless . . . that we have a dictator sitting up in Sacramento,” Marion Pack of Santa Ana told the board.

Like Pack, speakers voiced mistrust and frustration with the system of governing that has brought malathion into their back yards. Many said that, despite the state’s assurances, they fear for the health of their children. A few said they already think that they have been bothered physically by the malathion.

Near tears, Joan Magnuson of Riverside told officials about her chemically hypersensitive sister, who she said had to move out of Garden Grove because of the “life-threatening” reaction posed by the malathion spraying.

The malathion critics found allies in two of the five supervisors.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, an early malathion critic, questioned state officials sharply about the wisdom of the malathion spraying and again voted against the emergency declaration.

He was joined this time by Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who had abstained two weeks ago when the declaration last came up for renewal. On Monday, she organized a delegation of city officials to Sacramento to voice their concerns about what they charge is the state’s mishandling of the Medfly issue and its failure to allay public fears.

Wieder suggested that the emergency declaration has taken on some tangible implications. She pointed to the comments of a Sacramento Superior Court judge last month when he referred to the county’s emergency declaration as one factor in refusing to halt the spraying.

But Board Chairman Don R. Roth and Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Thomas F. Riley, citing a legal opinion by the county counsel, said they believe that the state can move ahead with its spray plans regardless of the county’s position.

By opposing the emergency declaration, they asserted, the county may only be opening itself up to legal liability from future lawsuits.

Vasquez said the county faced a “lose-lose proposition.” In the end, Vasquez voted for the emergency declaration but offered an amendment that sought to distance the county from the state’s actions.

“We’re not advocating, we are not endorsing aerial spraying,” Vasquez said in the amendment. “We prefer other alternatives.”

State agriculture officials at the meeting assured supervisors that they are pursuing nonspraying options and plan to establish a third plant in Hawaii to produce sterile Medflies. The sterile flies, in short supply, are used to try to breed the fruit fly population into extinction. They have not been available for use in Orange County.

In the meantime, state officials said they are confident that the aerial pesticide applications will do the job in safely protecting the state’s $16-billion agriculture industry from Medfly infestation.

State Department of Food and Agriculture Director Henry Voss, who drew hisses from the anti-malathion crowd when he left the board meeting early to return to Sacramento, said: “The eradication effort is working. . . . We are finding fewer flies . . . (and) I am confident the infestation is under control.”

Voss added: “Allowing the Medfly to become a permanent resident of the state would be a disaster, economically and environmentally.”

Dr. James Stratton, a medical epidemiologist with the state Department of Health Services, asserted that studies have borne out that the low malathion dosages used in sprayings “do not pose any risk to the public of a systemic poisoning.”

He did caution, however, that the possibility of the pesticide triggering allergic reactions is still “an open question.”

It is this type of physical reaction that malathion critics may cite in trying to halt the sprayings.

In a letter to the Legal Aid Society as part of its planned lawsuit on behalf of the homeless, Dr. Alan Broughton, a Santa Ana physician who said he specialized in pesticide exposure, reported: “The symptoms exhibited in (the homeless people’s) declarations--chills, headache, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, eye irritation and disorientation--are symptoms consistent with malathion exposure.”

Elsewhere in the crowded Medfly arena, city councils in Anaheim, Laguna Niguel, Yorba Linda and Fullerton drew dozens of residents concerned about malathion.

Laguna Niguel and Fullerton put off any action on the issue, but Anaheim’s City Council joined a growing list of North County cities that have urged the state to delay spraying because of health concerns.

The Anaheim council also asked the Legislature to give local officials some control over pesticide policy. But despite earlier discussions, it postponed a decision on whether to join the cities of Huntington Beach, Garden Grove and Westminster in an ongoing lawsuit to try to halt the spraying.

Times staff writers Lisa Mascaro and James M. Gomez contributed to this report.