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On Friday, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) unveiled the next phase of its controversial effort to eradicate LBAM, which still includes aerial pesticide spraying of “forested” and “agricultural” areas, despite last year’s large-scale opposition from dozens of California communities, scientific experts, and legislators. Even as the nation and the state confront major state budget shortfalls, CDFA continues to push its multi-million dollar plan to exterminate a pest that has done no documented damage.
The EIR surveys a range of proposed LBAM treatments, from aerial and ground spraying of pesticides on public and private property to lobbing “goo” laced with the mutagenic, neurotoxic, and possibly carcinogenic pesticide permethrin at telephone poles and trees to attract and kill the moth.
The area over which the treatments will take place currently encompasses 13 counties including much of the Bay and Santa Cruz areas but would be expanded to anywhere in the state where the moth is found, excluding small areas of southeastern California and the Sierras.
The report finds no negative health impacts from ground or aerial pesticide spraying and that airplane noise would be the only negative impact of aerial spraying.
The report also defines the “no action” alternative as entailing massive use of toxic pesticides by homeowners and as a result concludes that taking no action for LBAM would have more significant environmental impacts than the multiple mass chemical applications proposed by the state.
The EIR does not address: the hundreds of illnesses reported after LBAM aerial spraying in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties in 2007, evidence cited by UC scientists that LBAM has been in the state for decades, and the lack of evidence that LBAM poses a risk to crops or wild plants. The report instead dramatizes a recent isolated incident in which an unconfirmed species of leaf-roller moth did modest damage to a single blackberry field in Watsonville as evidence that “Recent LBAM infestations in organic berries have caused up to 20 percent crop loss.”
“The assumptions and conclusions in this EIR defy rationality,” said Nan Wishner, spokesperson for Stop the Spray East Bay. “This plan is just another of the state’s attempts to use pseudo-science to justify its predetermined goal to use unnecessary, unsafe, and ineffective chemical treatments for a moth that has been in the state for decades without doing any damage.”
Environmental groups were quick to point out many concerns with new plan, including its foundation. “Eradication is an unachievable goal in California,” said Paul S. Towers, Director of Pesticide Watch. “With global warming and global trade, officials need to take a realistic approach to tackling pests. Healthy farms and healthy ecosystems create the best defenses against pests like the moth.” The report does not even consider the well-accepted and scientifically based strategy of integrated pest management, which California farmers use to control other common insect pests.
Other concerns environmental groups have raised include the fact that the EIR is based on incomplete assessments by the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment of the risks of aerial spray and the extremely limited studies of short-term toxicity of only the active ingredient in the pheromone based pesticides proposed for use.
“As we know, the so-called inert ingredients in pesticides are often as dangerous as, if not more dangerous than, the active ones,” noted Center for Environmental Health Research Director Caroline Cox.
An appendix to the report does note that there are no data about health effects from long-term human exposure for most of the pesticides proposed for use in the program.
