The Governor and the Medfly

It should never have reached this stage, but the battle against the Medfly has become a civil war between urban and rural California--complete with absurd challenges to aerial combat, of a sort, in the skies above Los Angeles.

This week the simmering anger of Angelenos--whose homes are regularly being sprayed from helicopters with the pesticide malathion as part of the state campaign to eradicate the illusive Medfly--reached a boiling point that even the most insular Sacramento bureaucrat could not ignore. The cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank and Long Beach all voted against malathion spraying. In so doing, they joined cities in Orange County that have tried to halt the aerial pesticide applications, so far without success. State officials say that the protests will have no effect, but they have ratcheted the malathion controversy up several notches, and that can’t help matters any.

The most dramatic anti-malathion vote was Pasadena’s decision to ban helicopter formations in the air above that city at altitudes below 700 feet. This means that when the state’s aerial malathion teams appear in the skies over the Rose Bowl, they can be pursued by Pasadena police helicopters and cited when they land. The pilots working for the state could face a year in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.

The Los Angeles City Council, joined by Glendale and Burbank, has voted to ask a state court to force state officials to open up all the books on malathion in an effort to answer the many questions urban residents have about the pesticide, about the Medfly and about the controversial strategy the state adopted to fight the pest.

That’s not an unreasonable request. At least it shows somebody in City Hall is thinking seriously about the problem--perhaps even looking for room to compromise. At last some folks in the state Capitol are trying to be responsive, too--witness the effort state Health Director Kenneth W. Kizer made to allay fears about malathion by holding a public briefing on the pesticide’s possible health effects.

But that was in Sacramento, and the crisis in public confidence about the Medfly war is in Southern California, and Kizer is no match for local public officials who have responded to their angry constituents by trying to stop malathion spraying. That’s why Gov. George Deukmejian should go on television, or find some other public forum, and explain step-by-step why his Administration adopted this controversial tactic to protect the state’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry from the Medfly. There are reasonable explanations for the aerial spraying, but they have been lost amid the shouting of angry politicians and the clatter of helicopter engines.

Somebody has to get this debate back to a calm, reasonable level. Who better than a governor first elected to office by Long Beach suburbanites--and whose most loyal supporters include Central Valley farmers?