COUNTYWIDE : End to Emergency Medfly Status Seen

Orange County supervisors, who have been forced to grapple with declaring a county state of emergency every two weeks for the past six months because of the Mediterranean fruit fly, will gratefully wash their hands of the subject today, officials predicted.

Board Chairman Don R. Roth circulated a letter to his colleagues Monday in which he asked them to join him in formally ending the state of emergency now that the state has completed its aerial malathion-spraying program in Orange County.

Under state law, the county was obligated to review its emergency declaration every two weeks. That process had become a forum for citizens to complain to the supervisors, creating some tense sessions and prompting disagreement among board members. Although none of the board members supported aerial spraying of the controversial pesticide, the supervisors differed about the best way to intervene in the state-mandated program.