Floridians bugged by medfly--and spraying

All-out chemical warfare has raged for more than six weeks now, featuring air strikes from UH-1 “Huey” helicopters and DC-3s, a combat zone that has expanded to more than 500 square miles, and a daily body count. As of Tuesday, 709 of the enemy have been confirmed dead.

At risk is Florida’s $6-billion citrus and vegetable industry, facing the most serious threat in 40 years from a ravenous, prolific insect all too familiar to Californians--the Mediterranean fruit fly, which is capable of infesting everything from oranges and grapefruit to tomatoes.

Just as in California, the agent being employed to kill the medfly is the potent chemical malathion, mixed in a corn syrup bait and sprayed over groves and backyards alike from Tampa Bay to areas well inland.

And of course, just as in California, there is controversy. Despite assurances from both state and federal Department of Agriculture officials that diluted doses of the insecticide are not harmful to humans, many question the government’s tactics and the long-term effects of the spraying. Already traces of malathion have been found in the drinking water in Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa and a population of nearly 1 million.

“They are starting to infringe on the basic right of the public not to be hosed down against their will,” says Roger Stewart, the outspoken executive director of the county’s Environmental Protection Commission. His basic complaint, he said, “is with how they’ve gone about this. No matter how innocuous malathion may be to humans, this stuff kills beneficial insects too. It shouldn’t have come to this.”

Indeed, many residents of the Tampa area now begin their days with a phone call to the medfly hotline or by checking the daily newspapers’ map of the day’s aerial spray zones. “We’re buying bottled water. And we spend a lot more time inside the house,” said Judy Berry, a nurse, referring to her two young children.

And surprises still occur. At the Brandon Swim and Tennis Club the other day, Scott Becka scurried to get more than 200 day campers out of the pool when he spotted a pair of DC-3s coming in low over the treetops, spray nozzles wide open. “It’s so hard to get straight answers about when they’re coming and how long to keep the kids out of the pool,” said Becka, the club’s marketing director.

The medfly has been a persistent scourge in agricultural areas around the world, including Southern California, where several outbreaks in recent years have led to aerial malathion bombardment, heated protests and an extensive prevention program that costs about $15 million a year. Although the last medlfy detected in California was a single insect plucked from a Burbank trap in 1996, agriculture officials continue each week to release 125,000 sterile medflies per square mile in the Los Angeles area, said USDA’s Larry Hawkins.

Hawkins, an Ontario, Calif.-based public affairs officer with the USDA’s animal and plant health inspection service, said Florida and California are equally vulnerable to exotic pests since both are fertile areas and gateway cities for visitors from around the globe. Most medfly infestations, such as the one detected in Tampa on May 28 with a single bug in a kumquat tree, are believed to begin when a traveler unwittingly carries in fruit-bearing larvae.

Geographical differences between the two states, however, make prevention programs in Florida more difficult to run, said Hawkins. While the mountains help keep the weak-flying medflies in the Los Angeles basin, for example, no such topographical barriers exist in Florida.

Nonetheless, beginning Friday, USDA officials will begin weekly releases of 300 million sterile medflies, which will interrupt the insects’ breeding cycles in the five counties of west-central Florida where they have been found. Spraying of malathion will also continue.

While USDA officials voice confidence that the medlfy is being arrested, Bobby F. McKown of Florida Citrus Mutual, a growers’ cooperative, says farmers remain “very much concerned.” Japanese buyers visited groves in some of the state’s 34 citrus-producing counties last week and approved of control measures.

But, McKown cautioned: “This is a critical time. Frankly, our whole industry is at risk if these flies are not eradicated.”

Since biological controls don’t work as well in Florida as in California, Hawkins suggested looking at the early-warning system--traps hung on trees--to see if it needs beefing up.

Stewart, meanwhile, said he hopes the state and federal agriculture officials will “never again come into this county with such a half-baked operation. I am not saying malathion spraying outweighs the danger of the medfly. But we are paying a price for this. We are decimating the natural fauna of the region, wiping out good bugs like ladybugs and bees, screwing up the delicate balance of nature.”

The eradication plan, he said, “was woefully inadequate, maybe ill-conceived. And they didn’t even tell the state Environmental Protection Agency what was going on. They didn’t tell anybody squat.”

Times researcher Anna M. Virtue also contributed to this story.