Medfly Spraying in Ventura County to Start Wednesday

A six-month program of aerial spraying of the pesticide malathion will begin Wednesday over a 16-square-mile area of eastern Camarillo in an effort to wipe out the state’s newest Medfly infestation, agriculture officials announced Thursday.

Helicopters will begin night spraying of a sticky mixture of malathion and corn syrup over homes and fields in an area within a two-mile radius of a field where the Medfly infestation was discovered last week. About 29,000 people live in the area.

The order to spray from state Agriculture Secretary Henry J. Voss came one day after an 86-square-mile quarantine was imposed in the county and discovery of more Medflies and larvae in Camarillo. The most recent find brings the total to 58 flies.

“This is the largest single infestation found in such a short period of time in the state,” Voss said while announcing the aerial spraying at a news conference in Camarillo. “Finding the larvae was a bad sign that there is another generation of Medflies out there.”

Although the announcement of aerial spraying did not mention Gov. Pete Wilson, the governor’s office made it clear that Wilson fully supported aerial spraying in Ventura County.

Kristine Berman, deputy press secretary, said administrative procedures require the governor to issue an emergency proclamation authorizing the spraying by helicopters. “The governor will sign the emergency declaration tomorrow and that will allow the helicopters to go into the air,” she said.

The aerial spraying, which will be conducted 10 to 12 times at two-week intervals over the next six months, is the quickest, most efficient and cheapest method to knock down an infestation, Voss said.

It is also the best way to allay the fears of the county and state’s agriculture trading partners, Voss said. Agriculture is the No. 1 industry in Ventura County; farmers produced about $850 million in crops last year.

“Japan is our largest importer, but we are also concerned that Florida and Texas will quarantine us out of their states, and possibly Louisiana and Georgia as well,” Voss said.

In Sacramento, Wilson aides said Thursday that the governor had no choice but to swiftly order aerial spraying of the potentially devastating infestation.

Failure to quickly spray would have invited an economically crippling embargo of fruits and vegetables not only from the infested region of Ventura County but from throughout California as well, they said.

Such a notion, aides said, is unthinkable for the Republican governor who is campaigning hard for reelection on a platform of rebuilding the state’s recession-weary economy.

Likewise, they vividly recalled the political damage Democratic Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. dealt himself in 1981 when he rejected recommendations of his scientific advisers and delayed the aerial spraying of malathion in an infested area of urban Santa Clara County.

The delay enabled the crop-destroying insect to gain a firmer foothold, provoked embargoes of California produce, cost taxpayers almost $100 million and severely undercut Brown’s run against Wilson for the U.S. Senate in 1982. Wilson won.

In 1989, Republican Gov. George Deukmejian also faced a Medfly crisis and ordered malathion spraying in heavily populated parts of Los Angeles County, provoking an uproar over damage done to car paint and fears of adverse health effects.

Earlier this year, Wilson also ordered aerial attacks against the Medfly in the Norco area of Riverside. Aerial spraying concluded a few months ago, but it caused controversy among many residents.

The discovery of a Medfly infestation in Ventura County last week touched off an especially loud alarm among agricultural interests because it was the first time the pest was found in a commercial orchard, said Richard Matoian, president of the Grape and Tree Fruit League.

Previous discoveries in other parts of the state were made in back yard gardens and trees, he said.

“This is significant and it is scary,” said Matoian, whose organization represents 85% of the volume of fruits and vegetables shipped out of the state. “We want to act quickly to prevent a trading embargo from our partners. For instance, they don’t distinguish oranges from Ventura County from oranges from the San Joaquin Valley.”

Matoian said the Japanese are particularly wary of the Medfly. He and Clark Biggs of the California Farm Bureau Federation said if an embargo were to be imposed, Japan would likely act first and be followed by the Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Citing figures from a recent University of California study, Biggs said Far Eastern markets in 1992 received about 62% of California’s fruit and vegetable commodities that can play host to the Medfly. Those exports totaled $375 million, he said.

Biggs said agricultural interests considered the Ventura County infestation far more serious than the Riverside County Medfly situation. “It is an absolute potential disaster for California agriculture,” he said.