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Lessons of the Light Brown Apple Moth for California

By Bill Magavern
Director
Sierra Club California

Last Thursday, the California Department of Food and Agriculture announced it won’t proceed with its plans for aerial spraying over urban areas to eradicate the light brown apple moth. Instead, the CDFA will use sterile moths to prevent the LBAM’s spread.
The state’s plans also appear to involve some aerial spraying in agricultural areas and some ground applications of registered pesticides.

This represents a big victory for the community activists who opposed the spraying, but we can’t consider the matter over just because the spraying was spiked. Moving forward, we can either learn from the way the state’s spraying plans fell apart – or make the same mistakes again when a similar specter looms.

There's a lot we can learn from the controversy that surrounded the proposed aerial spraying:

1. Aerial spraying should be a last resort. The release of sterile moths represents a creative, yet proven way to control pests.

2. Let’s follow our own environmental laws. The California Environmental Quality Act still represents our best tool to assess any type of environmental impact. It’s a tool to see how all populations will fare, and to help officials weigh all potential alternatives.

3. Say what’s sprayed. Many pesticide manufacturers claim they don’t have to disclose proprietary materials, but nondisclosure creates the worry that so-called “inert” ingredients can harm people, pets and water. Full disclosure of all ingredients just makes sense.

4. Let’s prepare in advance for invasive pests and assess alternative methods for controlling them. AB 2763 (Laird) and AB 2765 (Huffman) would put in place new ways of planning in advance to take on these unwelcome invaders. Under AB 2763, agriculture officials would create a list of invasive species and plan how to take them on. AB 2765 would require these officials to hold pre-spraying public hearings, and to weigh alternatives to spraying.

The light brown apple moth controversy left one surprisingly positive legacy: it united activists, agricultural officials, our governor and our Legislature to protect California from the external threat and from potential harm.

We thank the governor and Secretary Kawamura for ordering the alternative treatment, as well as Assemblymembers Huffman, Laird, Leno, Hancock and Swanson, and Senator Migden, for leading legislative opposition to the aerial spraying.

Posted on June 22, 2008

Comments

You omitted two most important lessons of the LBAM spray debacle.

1 - Our political structure is built in such a way that commercial interests carry more weight than the desires of the electorate, health issues, etc.

2 - We can reverse that priority only with massive political action.

Democracy is not a spectator sport. The people of California will have the rights that they demand.

Posted by: Reede Stockton at June 22, 2008 09:57 AM

LBAM does not need to be eradicated - it needs to be reclassified as no threat to crops. This is all about the financial trade interests of agriculture and a complete waste of our tax dollars for the LBAM Project.

USDA/CDFA have not yet publicly released their written eradication plans and maps and the devil will be in the details of what chemicals they will be using where.

Recently, CDFA filed a Court appeal to have the EIR requirements waived in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties.

The entire LBAM Program needs to have a complete Environmental Impact Review (EIR) before any and all chemicals are utilized.

Posted by: bpm at June 22, 2008 02:19 PM

I too am glad that the aerial spray plan was nixed. Not only is the idea of chemicals from above scary, this type of eradication is way too big and costly and not proven to be effective. So yay.

However, I really am cringing at the immense pubic outpouring of alarm on this issue. If there was ever a NIMBY issue, this is it.

REAL pesticides, the ones that cause cancer? have been sprayed over CA farmfields for decades, and oops, on farmworkers too! I am a tad more concerned about THAT than some alarmist yuppies in Santa Cruz County or wherever. All these anti-LBAM eradication types--it would mean a great deal more if they had been concerned all along about these far more harmful practices.

I am sure Sierra Club opposes crop pesticide spraying, but it doesn't seem to be top priority, like LBAM. Hmmm

Posted by: Supercitizen at June 28, 2008 02:47 PM

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