The Fly That’s Bugging Sacramento
New Medflies are popping up in all sorts of places. Yesterday, West Los Angeles--tomorrow? Still, the state says that it’s sticking to its May 9 deadline for the end of widespread malathion spraying in some 350 square miles of Los Angeles and Orange counties. But it also says that it’s reserving its right to spray, once or twice, new areas of infestations. If necessary, the state says, a new infestation will be put down by malathion spraying first, followed by a release of sterile flies to breed the remaining pests out of existence.
Make sense? While many scientists agree there is no pesticide more “innocuous” than malathion, the state’s seemingly instinctive reliance on pesticides as the first line of defense against pests like the Medfly raises serious questions. So does proposed legislation by Assemblyman Norm Waters (D-Plymouth). The bill would extend indefinitely the exemption, scheduled to expire Jan. 1, 1991, that allows the California Department of Food and Agriculture to pesticide-bomb pests without an assessment of the effect on the environment (an environmental impact report).
The pro-exemption lobby, which includes the agriculture department and the Western Growers Assn., argues that the state must be able to respond to infestations in a timely manner to avoid a permanent establishment not just of Medflies but of other destructive insects. But it makes no sense to extend the pesticide free hand indefinitely. Any stopgap measure is by definition temporary, to be used only until a permanent solution is found. But no permanent solution for combatting the Medfly is likely to be found as long as the state holds onto the pesticide security blanket. With no responsibility to demonstrate the environmental impact of using pesticides, the use of pesticides will likely remain the easiest feasible option to eradicate troublesome bugs and will prevent other options from receiving the degree of study, testing, planning and money needed to be develop them.
Because there will likely always be some degree of ambiguity about the health effects of malathion, most residents of California would like to believe that the state would consider pesticide spraying, especially over crowded urban areas, as a last-resort method of eradication. But the Waters bill, and the department’s support of it, suggests that the old-style mentality still prevails.
