Corona Area in Uproar Over Spraying Plan : Medfly: Lawsuit seeks to block aerial application of malathion, set to start tonight. Local officials say they are being taken advantage of. State says action is essential to protect agriculture.

CORONA —  After 311 Mediterranean fruit flies were found in Los Angeles County in 1993, and 59 more in Orange County, and another 27 in San Bernardino County, state agricultural officials said they would flood the area with billions of sterile flies to try to rid the region of the crop-ravaging pest.

But after just one mated Medfly was found in Corona last month, the state said it would call in the air cavalry: a phalanx of helicopters swooping over the Riverside County city at 500 feet, spraying the insecticide malathion over 18 square miles of city blocks, residential neighborhoods, parks, schools, farms and corrals.

The announcement touched a communal nerve in Corona and its small rural neighbor, Norco. Residents have organized protests, local politicians and professors have challenged the state’s findings that malathion is not dangerous, and the Corona City Council has taken the state to court to block the aerial spraying.

“We’re being dumped on. They picked our areas because they don’t feel we have the political clout to stop it,” said City Councilwoman Barbara Carmichael of Norco, part of which is in the aerial spraying target zone.

Corona City Councilman Jeff Bennett is equally outraged. “I told (state Food and Agriculture Secretary) Henry Voss we’re being sprayed because we’re just a bunch of hicks,” Bennett said bitterly.

State officials put a decidedly different spin on the decision.

The discovery of even a single Medfly in Corona signaled to officials the likelihood that possibly hundreds of others were in the area. Officials said it was an ominous development because it showed that the fly had escaped previously quarantined areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties and could be headed toward farmlands and groves elsewhere in California, jeopardizing the state’s No. 1 industry.

“This is a serious economic as well as environmental issue that needs to be addressed,” said Carl DeWing, spokesman for the Department of Food and Agriculture. “Aerial spraying is the only alternative we have at this point. We’re not spraying on Corona because it has less political clout than L.A. We may still have to go into other areas with aerial spraying.”

The spraying is scheduled to begin at 9 tonight--the first of what may be as many as eight three-hour aerial applications of the insecticide here in the next five months.

On Friday, Corona officials filed a lawsuit in Riverside Superior Court--just as other communities did in 1989 and 1990--to stop the spraying. A hearing is set for today on whether to ground the helicopters.

Local officials acknowledge that they are trying to succeed where more powerful cities and politicians failed four years ago, when helicopters blanketed 500 square miles of Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties with malathion-laced corn syrup bait for more than 100 nights. Hundreds of people complained of rashes, respiratory problems and other maladies.

But citing post-spray medical monitoring and tests, the state concluded that malathion--the most common and among the gentlest of household and garden insecticides--could not be blamed for wholesale medical complaints. At most, it was responsible for relatively few, short-lived incidents of rashes and other minor problems, they said.

Nonetheless, agricultural officials said afterward that they hoped never to have to resort to aerial spraying again.

With the steady return of Medflies in the Los Angeles Basin since 1991, state officials have relied on manual, ground spraying of malathion and the release of sterile Medflies.

The program has not worked. On Jan. 13, Voss announced that the Medfly quarantine area in the greater Los Angeles Basin was being increased to 1,461 square miles, encompassing much of Los Angeles County and reaching farther into Orange and San Bernardino counties because the number of trapped Medflies kept rising.

To battle the Medflies in the basin, the state said it will release nearly 500 million sterile Medflies every week for 22 months, starting in March, in a strategy they hope will doom the species locally.

But the laboratories in Hawaii supply only enough sterile Medflies to release in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties, Voss said. To kill the Medflies over the 18-square-mile area in Corona and parts of Norco, officials have no choice but to spray malathion, he said.

Local officials bristled at not getting notice of the announcement and felt that they had been dismissed as outside the political decision-making loop. Community activists mobilized to fight the aerial spraying.

At a public meeting last Monday to discuss the spraying, state officials were shouted down. On Tuesday, the Corona City Council voted 5-0 to sue the state. On Thursday, a public demonstration was staged at the local library.

Malathion opponents have enlisted the support of state Sen. Ruben S. Ayala (D-Chino), longtime veteran of the agriculture and water resources committee. Citing “ambiguities” in a 1991 scientific review of the effect of malathion, Ayala wrote Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday that he is unconditionally opposed to using malathion until there is no longer any doubt about its safety.

“I don’t want to sound hasty and say, ‘To heck with the crops,’ ” Ayala said Friday. “But if it’s between crops and health, nothing is as important as health. We should sacrifice the crops.”

Aside from the broader political and public health questions, local critics argued that:

* Helicopters will spook the 14,000 horses and other livestock in the zone. (Food and Agriculture Department spokesman Carl DeWing suggests that they be tethered, hobbled or otherwise restrained during the quick flyovers.)

* Malathion will stick to corral fences and lure livestock to lick the insecticide. (DeWing says an animal would have to lick more than two miles of fence before it might be affected.)

* Spraying should be conducted after midnight--after children and adults are home and inside. (Based on the 1989-90 experience, DeWing says noisy post-midnight helicopter flights would create an even greater public outcry.)

Despite the opposition, California Department of Food and Agriculture officials, with the blessing of the state Department of Health Services and Cal/EPA, say they are committed to the aerial spraying.

A key element in the debate is the 1991 report by an independent, scientific review panel set up by Wilson. The panel concluded that malathion was generally effective and safe. But the report also called for further research, especially on its long-term effects, and said that aerial spraying of malathion should only be considered as a last resort.

And now, that moment has come, the state has said.

Agriculture officials are making some concessions this time. The spray mixture will contain only 10% malathion, and 90% bait--half the amount of insecticide used in 1989-90. The lower dose is effective, yet doubles the margin of public safety, said Veda Federighi, spokeswoman for the state Department of Pesticide Regulation.

Despite the local political opposition, Wilson is not expected to block spraying.

“The agriculture industry is so important to California’s economy that the only thing a prudent governor can do is make a decision based solely on the science,” said George Gorton, manager of Wilson’s reelection campaign. “And that’s what he has done. The science in this case says you’ve got to spray.”

Norco officials suggest that instead of spraying, a fraction of the sterile Medflies headed for the Los Angeles quarantine area be diverted to their region.

But DeWing said the margin of sterile Medflies necessary to do the job in the larger quarantine area is dangerously slim, and none can be spared for Corona.