County Imposes Medfly Quarantine : Fruit: Area covers 86 square miles of farmland and neighborhoods. Some residents worry it’s a first step to aerial spraying.

An agricultural quarantine aimed at combatting Ventura County’s Medfly infestation was imposed Wednesday over 86 square miles of farmland and residential neighborhoods stretching from Camarillo into Moorpark and Thousand Oaks--the first such emergency action in county history.

County officials and farm leaders, who called the quarantine crucial to efforts to control the devastating pest, said they had worked hard in recent days to keep the quarantine area as small as possible.

“We were pushing to have as little agriculture land affected as possible,” David Buettner, chief deputy agriculture commissioner for the county, said of negotiations with federal officials, who had asked for a larger quarantine area. “There was a lot of give-and-take.”

But the inclusion of residential areas outside Camarillo, where all the Medflies have been found so far, raised some concerns that the quarantine is only a first step toward possible aerial spraying of the pesticide malathion.

Aerial spraying, if it were ordered, would provoke a “great deal of opposition” in Thousand Oaks, said City Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski. “We’re not as dependent on agriculture as the rest of the county. It’s not part of our economy here.”

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But Supervisor Maggie Kildee said residents in the quarantine area should stay calm. “They have to understand it’s not a map for aerial spraying,” she said.

The quarantine will be imposed through at least three life cycles of the Mediterranean fruit fly, which in the cool fall weather could be up to six months. The quarantine could be extended indefinitely until the pest is wiped out.

The action covering 40,000 acres of farmland has been expected since the first two mated female Medflies were found in eastern Camarillo on Friday. Inspectors confirmed Wednesday that another 10 flies were found in a grove at St. John’s Seminary, bringing the total count to 53 flies--51 wild males and two fertile females all found within a quarter of a mile of the original site.

The quarantine boundaries--which lie along roads, highways and canyons--were drawn by local, state and federal officials after days of mapping and negotiations.

The quarantine order came from California Agriculture Secretary Henry Voss, with the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture expected to issue a federal quarantine with identical boundaries. Federal officials earlier had sought to draw the boundaries about half a mile farther from the discovery site.

The quarantine establishes a protocol for treatment with malathion and other means that commercial growers must follow before they can ship host fruit or vegetables from within the infested area.

Crops considered by U.S. officials or importers to be hosts to the Medfly include lemons, oranges, grapefruit, avocados, strawberries, peppers and tomatoes.

“I have an avocado crop to pick within a month, so I’ll have to spray them or let them drop,” said grower George Sorich, whose grove falls within the quarantine area. “But the main concern here is that we have to get rid of the fly.”

Residents within the quarantine area are asked not to move any home-grown produce outside the area unless it has been cooked or canned.

Officials, who are still trying to determine the extent of the infestation, will not decide whether to use aerial spraying or other eradication methods until they know how far the infestation has spread.

“A lot of folks are asking us why we don’t jump in now with a treatment program,” said Doug Hendrix, a spokesman with the Cooperative Medfly Project in Los Angeles, which includes experts from the federal and state agriculture departments. “But we can make that decision much better once we have all the facts.”

The Medfly Project, which has overseen the efforts to eradicate the Medfly from the Los Angeles Basin and elsewhere in Southern California, will make recommendations for treating the infestation to Gov. Pete Wilson.

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Those recommendations are expected by the end of the week, a state spokeswoman said. It would take an order from the governor to begin aerial spraying.

“The Medfly Project team are experts,” said Sean Walsh, a Wilson spokesman. “And we expect that we are going to take their advice.”

In the Los Angeles Basin, where aerial spraying of the pesticide malathion caused protests in 1989 and 1990, officials now use a combination of ground malathion spraying and sterile male flies to keep the infestation levels low.

Since March, a new eradication program calls for the release of 430 million sterile male Medflies a week across the entire basin.

The flies come from two laboratories in Hawaii, and the supply is supplemented by more flies from labs in Guatemala and Mexico, all areas where wild populations of Medflies are already established.

But 430 million flies per week is top capacity for those labs, Hendrix said, and at present, none of the sterile flies is available for Ventura County.

It is possible, however, that some flies from the Los Angeles project could be diverted to Ventura County, said Agriculture Commissioner Earl McPhail.

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Meanwhile, inspectors in Ventura County have sprayed a combination of malathion and bait on the ground within the half-mile core area of the Medfly discoveries. In addition, they have set more than 700 traps within the quarantine area to trap the pests.

Reaction to possible aerial spraying varied throughout the county.

In Camarillo, where the retirement community of Leisure Village lies inside the quarantine area, City Manager J. William Little said there is no danger from the pesticide “as long as people stay out from under the spray itself. We certainly want to cooperate to get rid of this thing as quickly as possible,” he said.

In Moorpark, where the quarantine area covers mostly unpopulated areas, City Councilman Scott Montgomery said he would welcome aerial spraying.

“Agriculture is almost a billion-dollar industry in the county, and we have to act aggressively to stop this threat,” he said.

Thousand Oaks City Atty. Mark Sellers said he thought spraying would spark protests in his city, but considered it unlikely that any legal challenge would succeed.

Moorpark Mayor Paul Lawrason said he dislikes the idea of spraying, but “it looks like that’s what we’re going to have to do. As much as I don’t like it, I don’t think we have a choice.”

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In a declaration of emergency by Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter on Tuesday, Ventura County agriculture officials estimated potential losses at up to $439 million, which represents the total value of all crops considered to be hosts to the Medfly.

The California Office of Emergency Services recommended Wednesday that Wilson approve a California state of emergency, which would clear the way for state disaster assistance, Ventura County disaster officials said.

The county’s disaster declaration also asked Wilson to request a similar declaration from President Clinton, opening up federal disaster assistance funds as well. However, Wilson had made no decision by late Wednesday, a spokesman said.

The state and federal disaster assistance could become important to county growers if Japan, the county’s most lucrative market for its top crop of lemons, cuts off trade from the entire county, rather than just from the quarantine area.

If the county loses the Japanese market, it could cause a domestic glut on lemons, causing prices to fall, said officials at Sunkist Growers Assn., the world’s largest citrus cooperative, which represents 900 growers in Ventura County.

“Ventura county is one of the largest lemon producers in the world,” said William Quarles, vice president of corporate relations for Sunkist. “If Japan should cut off the whole county, it would be a large concern. But there has been no such announcement from Japan.”

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture does not consider lemons to be a host to Medflies, so lemons being sold domestically do not have to be treated before they can be shipped from within the quarantine area.

Because most lemons and oranges have already been picked and shipped and strawberries are out of season until spring, the immediate financial impacts on growers are expected to be minimal.

However, farmers were bracing for long-term effects that will surely include increased expenses for pesticide applications and could mean lower prices on the market for their fruit.

Meanwhile, the Japanese have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to track any fruit shipped from the county for the 30 days prior to the first Medfly find.

That request could take days or weeks as packinghouses go through records to determine the grove where the fruit was grown, where it was shipped and on which vessel, officials said.

Correspondents Julie Fields, Scott Hadly and Ira E. Stoll and Times staff writer Stephanie Simon contributed to this report.

Medfly Quarantine Area Camarillo site where Medflies were first located. *

86-square mile area of Camarillo, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks