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The state Senate Environmental Quality Committee unanimously passed a resolution yesterday (Monday) calling for a moratorium on aerial spraying for the light brown apple moth (LBAM) until the state agriculture department “can demonstrate that the pheromone compound it intends to use is both safe to humans and effective at eradicating the light brown apple moth.” 

The resolution, SCR 87, authored by Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco and Marin County, next goes to the Senate Agriculture Committee. 

While the resolution is simply advisory to the governor, if eventually passed by both houses of the state legislature, “it becomes a tool for public pressure for people in power,” said Nan Wishner, chair of the Albany Integrated Pest Management Task Force, speaking to the Daily Planet today. 

“It will be harder for people in power to hide behind the furniture,” she added.  

Wishner said she was especially impressed by the testimony before the committee by Derrell Chambers, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist, who said he does not support the proposed spraying of the LBAM with a synthetic pheromone, aimed at disrupting mating behavior. The pheromone and other ingredients are put into microcapsules and dispersed by low-flying airplanes. 

“No eradication of a pest species with only mating disruption has ever been accomplished,” Chambers told the committee, quoted in a Pesticide Watch advisory. Chambers statement contradicts the California Department of Food and Agriculture position, which is that the aerial spraying of a pheromone can eradicate the moth. 

“Certainly, the public’s present feeling that they are being subjected to an unwarranted, unsafe, and untested procedure should be more thoroughly addressed than it so far has been,” Chambers told the committee. “I believe the LBAM project should be challenged on all these issues, but I am particularly concerned that the issue of efficacy has not been sufficiently questioned.” 

Aerial spraying was conducted in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties in September and was to be resumed in June, however, a Santa Cruz Superior Court decision last week imposed a moratorium on the spraying in Santa Cruz until the environmental impacts are studied. (A similar lawsuit targeting the spraying in Monterey County will be heard May 8.) 

Cities calling for a moratorium on the spray include Monterey, Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, Fairfax, Santa Cruz, San Anselmo, Pacific Grove, Mill Valley, Emeryville, Corte Madera, Sausalito, Richmond, Seaside, San Rafael, San Francisco, Alameda, Tiburon, Larkspur, Piedmont.  

The East Bay Regional Parks District and the Berkeley Unified School District have also passed resolutions opposing the aerial spraying of the moth. 

Attorneys representing Oakland, Berkeley, Albany and some other cities have been meeting to discuss a possible lawsuit to stop the state from spraying, but no decision has yet been made.