Features

Anti-Spray Resolution Goes to Full State Senate

By Judith Scherr
Thursday June 19, 2008 - 09:52:00 AM

On a 4-0 bipartisan vote, the State Senate Agriculture Committee approved a resolution Tuesday calling for a moratorium on aerial spraying for the light brown apple moth until the state can prove that the spray is both safe for humans and the environment and effective against the moth. 

The full Senate could vote on State Concurrent Resolution 87, authored by Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco/North Bay, as early as today (Thursday), according to Migden’s office. 

If the resolution passes the State Senate, it will be heard in the Assembly Agriculture Committee before going to the full body. 

“Bay Area residents ought not to serve as guinea pigs and have their health jeopardized for an ill-conceived program and an unproven approach,” Migden said in a press statement. 

The State Department of Food and Agriculture argues that the product planned to be sprayed in the Bay Area and coastal cities of Monterey and Santa Cruz is safe for humans and necessary to stop the moth that they say could jeopardize California’s billion-dollar agricultural business. 

For more information on the Light Brown Apple Moth—from scientists, politicians, activists and lawyers—there is a Town Hall to Stop the Spray, 7-9 p.m. Monday at Lake Merrit's Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave.  

Speakers include John Russo, Oakland city attorney; Daniel Harder, Ph.D., University of California Santa Cruz Arboretum director; Lawrence Rose, M.D. M.P.H., former senior public medical officer for Cal-OSHA, and a representative from the office of Assemblymember Sandré Swanson, D-Oakland. 

Sponsors are Stop the Spray-East Bay (www.stopthespray.org) and Pesticide Watch (www.pesticidewatch.org).