Medfly Found in Brea; Spraying Is Held Off for Now : Infestation: State officials break with past policy in not ordering aerial applications of malathion.

State agriculture officials on Monday announced the discovery of the first wild Mediterranean fruit fly in Orange County in seven months, but in a break from past policy, said they will not revive malathion spraying unless more flies are found.

The fly, a fertile but unmated female, was trapped in a peach tree last Friday just a few blocks from the site of a Nov. 17 find that prompted nine aerial malathion sprayings in the northern tip of Orange County, the first such sprayings in county history.

Disclosure of the most recent discovery came just as U.S. agriculture officials announced the end of a quarantine on certain uninspected fruit in four Southland communities.

Federal officials said Monday that the absence of any recent Medfly finds in the Garden Grove, Sylmar, Riverside County or San Bernardino areas allowed them to ease the restrictions on transporting fruit into, out of and within those regions. (The ban resulted in the prosecutions of several commercial vendors in recent months.) Those areas make up about 20% of the more than 1,300 square miles now under the ban.

The Brea area was to have been removed from the quarantine list next month, but because of the latest find, the first in the city since Nov. 17, it will remain under restriction indefinitely.

The Brea find also came just four days after agriculture officials assured a state advisory panel that the Medfly war was nearly won. The find is the first in Southern California in three weeks as well as the first in Orange County since Jan. 10, when a Medfly was discovered in Garden Grove.

The find also offers further evidence to support critics of the state’s Medfly campaign, who argue that the crop-attacking pest has found a permanent home in Southern California and cannot be eradicated through malathion spraying or any other means.

State agriculture officials, however, put a different spin on the matter.

“We’re disappointed, but at the same time this was not unexpected,” said Isi Siddiqui, assistant director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “We knew we were likely to have some isolated flies here and there. We are close to victory, and a single fly find doesn’t change that.”

Under the state protocol guiding the decision-making process just a few months ago, the trapping of a wild fly would have made a new round of sprayings in Brea likely if not inevitable, said Siddiqui and Pat Minyard, deputy Medfly Project director. But this time, agriculture officials made no plans to spray the area.

“The department at this stage is trying to assess these finds on a case-by-case basis,” Minyard said. “We’re toward the end of this infestation . . so we can afford to take a more conservative approach without resorting to spraying. Patience pays off.”

For now, the state’s response to the Brea find will be limited to increasing the checks on Medfly traps, stripping fruit from trees, and ground applications of malathion to any fruits or vegetables infested with Medflies. Officials are also considering releasing millions of sterile flies in the area, a procedure used there from May through July rather than the aerial spraying.

But Minyard warned that any other find in the area would almost certainly prompt another round of aerial spraying. Malathion was sprayed nine times between Nov. 30 and April 30 over an area of about eight square miles that encompassed Brea, La Habra and Fullerton.

Indeed, local officials are already bracing for the worst.

“It’s just so frustrating. I thought we had seen the last of it,” said Brea Mayor Carrey J. Nelson. “I’m a firm believer that that this fly has got to be eradicated, through spraying or whatever it takes. But I just think we’re stuck with these things. It could be another long, drawn-out process to fight this.”

Nelson said he believes most of the city council and local residents would grudgingly accept the revival of the sprayings as “a necessary evil.”

During the aerial sprayings late last year, residents in the Brea, La Habra and Fullerton spray zone offered little public protest over the malathion campaign; many said in interviews that they understood the need to protect the state’s agriculture.

It was not until January, when spraying began in a 36-square-mile area taking in Garden Grove and Westminster that the malathion issue became a political firestorm, replete with massive protests and unsuccessful legal challenges, for local and state agriculture officials.

Protesters argued that the potential harm to public health outweighed considerations of the financial threat the infestation posed to agriculture.

Mollie Haines, a Garden Grove resident who, as a leader of the Orange County Residents Against Malathion Spraying coalition, helped organize protests, said of the new find: “It doesn’t surprise me. We thought all along they were just bragging about how successful this program has been. I was never convinced it would work.

“We could be back to square one now,” Haines added. “But if they find one in Garden Grove--oh jeez, I don’t even want to think about having to close all the windows and stay indoors during this hot weather.”