New Law Takes Aim at Sharpshooter

Surrounded by grapevines and wearing a tie the color of cabernet, Gov. Gray Davis on Wednesday signed legislation intensifying the fight against a bug that threatens the state’s $33-billion wine industry.

Under the bill, grape growers will pay a fee based on the value of their crop to fund research on the glassy-winged sharpshooter. The half-inch-long pest has ravaged vineyards in Riverside County and has been called the biggest peril facing California agriculture since the medfly.

“This pest is proof that disaster can come in very small packages,” Davis said during a bill-signing ceremony at a vineyard near this town on the Sacramento River delta.

Noting that California produces 91% of all grapes sold in the country, the governor said: “When there is a threat to this important industry, we pay attention.”

Although the legislation imposes a fee on growers--$3 for every $1,000 of the crop’s gross value--it is one that the industry supports. Indeed, the bill (AB 1394) sailed through the Legislature with no opposition.

The industry endorsement is clearly important for Davis, who harbors future political ambitions--a second term, if not a run for the White House--and does not want to be remembered for imposing any sort of tax.

But wine industry officials said contributing money to the sharpshooter war--the fee will raise an estimated $25 million over the next five years--is important symbolically for them as well.

“It’s important to our credibility that we be partners in this fight,” said John De Luca, president of the Wine Institute, an association that focuses on wine-related policy. “The public rightfully expects that.”

The glassy-winged sharpshooter is a leafhopper that appears to prefer grapes to all other plants. Armed with a needle-sharp proboscis, it stabs plants and sucks out their nutrients.

But its appetite is not its most lethal weapon. The insect also spreads a bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, which causes Pierce’s disease. The incurable disease kills a plant by blocking its ability to absorb water and nutrients.

Outbreaks of Pierce’s disease date back more than 100 years in California. In the late 1800s, the virus destroyed 40,000 acres of wine grapes in Anaheim.

Concern was minimal, however, until the glassy-winged sharpshooter--native to northern Mexico and the Southeastern United States--showed up in California. Its ability to spread the disease is far greater than that of other carriers.

By 1999, the bug was ravaging vineyards in the Temecula area, destroying $40 million worth of grapevines. Since then, it has infested all of Southern California except Imperial County, and has been detected in backyards in Fresno, Redding, Sacramento, San Jose and other Northern California cities.

So far, the state’s premier wine country--Napa and Sonoma--has been spared. Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins, a Democrat who represents that territory and was author of the bill signed Wednesday, says anxiety over the bug remains high in her district.

Wiggins said the dense concentration of vines in the narrow Napa Valley means “that if the sharpshooter took hold there, it could devastate the industry in no time.”

Agriculture Secretary Bill Lyons is no less respectful of the insect’s fearsome efficiency, calling it the biggest threat to the state’s farmers since the Mediterranean fruit fly infestation of 1981. On Wednesday, Davis made an oblique reference to that time, noting that some governors--meaning Jerry Brown, for whom Davis worked--had been criticized for not acting swiftly enough to contain the dreaded fly.

Davis made it clear that would not happen again.

“Our attitude,” he said, “is you have to move quickly and decisively.”

Already, the state and federal governments have devoted $39 million to contain and conduct research on the sharpshooter. Another $8.5 million is within the state budget Davis is scheduled to sign today.

The bulk of the money from the growers’ fees will pay for research on a cure for Pierce’s disease and effective weapons against the bug. Already, 56 separate research projects are underway.

While chemical spraying has knocked it back in infested areas, concerns about pesticides have fueled research on parasitic wasps that eat sharpshooter eggs. Thousands of the stingless wasps already have been released in Southern California.

Also promising is the application of a clay-like substance to grape vines, a coating that irritates the bugs, disrupts their egg laying and may restrict their ability to spread Pierce’s disease.