Downtown L.A. Area Faces Round of Medfly Spraying

After a three-week reprieve from malathion applications over Los Angeles County, state officials announced Monday that downtown Los Angeles and numerous surrounding neighborhoods must be sprayed for Mediterranean fruit flies.

A 14-square-mile sector will be visited weekly by malathion-bearing helicopters for at least three weeks, beginning Thursday night, the officials said. The decision to spray followed the trapping last week of a lone Medfly in a back-yard peach tree near Echo Park, just west of downtown--and less than a mile from where an infestation that eventually spread throughout the region was first detected last summer.

The treatment zone is bounded roughly by the Golden State Freeway and Hyperion Avenue on the north, Vermont Avenue on the west, Olympic Boulevard on the South and the Los Angeles River on the east. In addition to Echo Park, it encompasses Silver Lake, Chinatown, parts of Koreatown and downtown’s Bunker Hill and Skid Row. Many of these neighborhoods had not been sprayed before.

Plans have been laid to bus homeless people to indoor shelters for the night. The Dodgers also are scheduled to play a home game Thursday night at their stadium within the treatment zone, but the spraying is expected to begin well after the contest is completed.

The development marked a discouraging turn for the Medfly eradicators, who had been buoyed by a two-month hiatus in new discoveries of the crop-destroying pest. They had cut back the spray zone from more than 500 square miles at the infestation’s height to just 34 square miles in San Bernardino County.

“Of course, every new fly is a disappointment,” said Roy Cunningham, a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist and one of five scientists serving on the state’s Medfly Science Advisory Panel. “I was hoping things were coming to an end.”

The pesticide applications will be followed by release of millions of sterilized fruit flies, which are intended to breed the fertile population out of existence over the span of three mating cycles. Should the sometimes troublesome supply of sterile flies run short, officials warned, it could necessitate several additional pesticide applications.

In El Cajon, where malathion has been sprayed three times to eradicate an infestation of Mexican fruit flies, no new flies have been found since May 5, when two egg-bearing females were trapped, said Connie Smith, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. A mature male Mexfly was trapped near the same site April 25.

Trapping was intensified before three aerial applications of malathion in June over 16 square miles of El Cajon, and trapping will be reintensified at the end of the summer, after the last batch of sterile Mexflies is released, Smith said.

No wild Mediterranean fruit flies have been found in the San Diego area since one was trapped in 1986.

The crucial question now is whether the Medfly found in Echo Park is the first of a summer onslaught or an isolated find that represents the last remnants of the old infestation.

Cunningham said he believes that the long period between the new discovery and the last Medfly trapping on May 1 is an encouraging sign that the tide has turned against the pest.

“By this time we should be finding lots of flies if we had made serious errors,” Cunningham said. “It looks like we’re doing the right thing because we’re not finding oodles of flies.”

He noted that eradication officials had expected to trap a few flies in the summer months, when the hot weather and abundance of ripe fruit offers ideal breeding conditions for the Medfly.

“It’s not unexpected,” he said. “We all knew that we hadn’t reached the point of celebrating yet. We really have to get through August for that.”

James R. Carey, a UC Davis entomologist who also serves on the Medfly Science Advisory Panel, has long warned that the summer could bring a resurgence of the Medfly.

Carey has plotted the dates of all Medfly discoveries in California since 1975, when the first infestation in the state occurred, and found that the vast majority of Medflies were trapped in July, August and September.

According to Carey’s figures, only 9% of Medflies had been trapped from January to July over the last 15 years, while 69% were trapped in August, September and October.

It is Carey’s belief, based on his statistical research, that the Medfly has never been fully eradicated from the state, but that a porous system of trapping makes it seem as though the pest has vanished.

The Medfly--which lays its eggs in a variety of fruits and vegetables--is considered a major threat to the state’s $17-billion farm industry.

Opponents of the aerial pesticide applications were upset by Monday’s announcement.

Adelaide Nimitz, president of the community group Families Opposed to Chemical Urban Spraying, said the discovery of a Medfly so near a previous treatment zone reinforced her belief that the eradication campaign is failing.

“No, it’s not over yet,” Nimitz said. “It’s exactly what we knew would happen.”

Joel Reynolds, senior staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the new spraying may cause serious problems because it will encompass the large homeless population downtown.

“It’s a huge area with one of the largest concentrations of homeless in the country,” Reynolds said. “We are very concerned.”

The city of Los Angeles announced plans late Monday to notify the homeless throughout downtown of the spraying and provide them temporary shelter. Sue Flores, director of human services for the city, said the city will pick up homeless people downtown and bus them to temporary shelters.

The city has moved homeless residents before because of malathion spraying that touched fringes of downtown. She said only a few dozen of the estimated 1,000 homeless in Skid Row took advantage of the service.

Alice Callaghan, director of Las Familias del Pueblo, a community center in Skid Row, said the biggest problem would not be moving the homeless, but getting the word out to them that spraying will occur.

“How do you find over 1,000 homeless adults?” she asked. “It’s an absurd notion. They’re spread everywhere.”

Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner E. Leon Spaugy, a co-director of the eradication project, expressed confidence that, despite the setback, the campaign, overall, is succeeding.

“I think we’re still on course,” he said.

Spaugy said there should be few problems in handling the new outbreak, but he is concerned about two potential difficulties: locating an airport from which to launch the squadron of malathion-spraying helicopters, and securing a sufficient supply of sterile flies to phase out spraying in Echo Park after three weeks.

Throughout most of the eradication campaign, the helicopters flew out of El Monte Airport and then Riverside Airport. Los Angeles County officials, however, complained that El Monte has carried too much of the burden and have opposed efforts to use the airport to stage flights to spray zones far from El Monte. The Los Angeles City Council also has been discussing a ban on using city airports for malathion spraying.

Spaugy said the state intends to launch from Riverside Airport for the first spraying on July 5. After that, however, he is not sure which facility will be used. Under emergency powers given to the eradication campaign by the governor, the campaign technically can fly its helicopters from wherever it wants. Officials, however, have shown a sensitivity to the political nuances of the controversial program, especially in its latter stages.

The eradication campaign has suffered occasionally from shortfalls in the number of sterile flies from breeding facilities in Hawaii. The shortfalls have been blamed on pesticide contamination in the food used to rear the sterile insects.

The shortage, which at one point left the eradication project with a third less sterile flies than scientists had recommended, has resulted in a dilution of the treatment program--a move that some of the state’s scientific advisers have warned could open a “window of opportunity” for the pest to breed.

MALATHION SPRAYING

The state Department of Food and Agriculture has announced plans to conduct aerial spraying of malathion in a 14-square-mile area including downtown Los Angeles and numerous surrounding neighborhoods. Three aerial applications of malathion will be made, followed by the release of sterile Medflies. If sterile Medflies are unavailable, additional malathion spraying will be conducted. The first spraying is scheduled for Thursday, to be conducted between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., weather permitting.

Precautions: Stay indoors; keep animals indoors; wash animal dishes and toys left outside; cover cars; keep doors and windows closed.

Information: Toll-free numbers for the Agricultural Commissioner: (800) 356-2894; (800) 225-1346.