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The courts and the governor took independent actions Thursday that resulted—at least temporarily—in stopping the planned aerial and ground spraying for the light brown apple moth. 

The court ruling came at around 10:30 a.m. in Santa Cruz Superior Court, where Judge Paul Burdick ruled that the state must prepare an environmental impact report on the danger of the moth before spraying can be carried out in Santa Cruz County.  

Also on Thursday Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger met with Marin County officials and anti-spray advocate Paul Schramski of Pesticide Watch and promised that the spraying won’t take place until a battery of tests has been completed. 

Lori Ciosfi, of California Alliance to Stop the Spray in Santa Cruz, told the Planet in a phone interview from the courtroom Thursday that the judge ruled that, given there was no crop loss resulting from the moth, the moth had not created a state of emergency. 

The California Department of Food and Agriculture argued that it has the right to spray without an EIR because the moth presents potential crop devastation and should be considered an emergency.  

“The judge made the decision right there, after hearing arguments from both sides, to stop the ground and aerial spray,” Ciosfi said. “It was really exciting.” 

Ciosfi said the judge ruled that the supposition that there might be crop loss was insufficient to declare an emergency. There has been no actual crop loss. 

The ruling applies only to Santa Cruz County and was brought by Santa Cruz County against the California Department of Food and Agriculture. 

The ruling will likely delay a planned aerial spraying in Santa Cruz County that had been slated to begin June 1.  

In a prepared statement CDFA Secretary A. G. Kawamura promised to appeal: “My department will aggressively seek an expedited appeal of this ruling, which threatens the safety of our agriculture, environment, and economy. The light brown apple moth is a serious threat not just to Santa Cruz but to the entire state, and the method we are using is the safest, most progressive eradication program available.” 

A similar lawsuit demanding an EIR before spraying, brought by Helping Our Peninsula’s Environment (HOPE) and targeting Monterey County, will be heard May 8.  

Both Santa Cruz and Monterey counties were sprayed in September with Checkmate, a pesticide that consists of a synthetic pheromone, intended to disrupt the LBAM’s mating behavior and other known and unknown chemicals. It is dispersed aerially in microcapsules.  

Many spray opponents say the chemicals in the spray and the microcapsules themselves caused health problems after the September spray. 

Asked how the ruling might impact the state’s plan to spray Bay Area cities in August to disrupt the mating patterns of the moth, Oakland attorney Steve Volker said that while he has yet to read the judge’s ruling, it is his belief that the lawsuit’s likely to have little impact on the Bay Area cities set to be sprayed in August.  

That is because the state has begun an EIR and will likely complete it by the time it plans to spray the Bay Area in August, he said. He further noted that that the EIR is likely to be similar to previous studies coming from the state, such as a health report that denied the 600 health complaints after the September spraying in the Santa Cruz area were related to the spraying.  

The CDFA “attempts to snow the public,” Volker said. 

Volker intends to file a lawsuit in federal district court in about a month, naming the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency as defendants as well as naming the CDFA as defendant in California Superior Court.  

He said he will argue that the moth has been misclassified as a pest, given the likelihood—according to Jim Casey, an entomologist at UC Davis—that the moth has been established in California for 30 to 50 years without causing crop damage. The lawsuits will be filed on behalf of the North Coast Rivers Alliance and other nonprofit organizations, he said. 

While a number of cities, including Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, El Cerrito and Oakland, have talked about suing the state over the LBAM spray, none have asked to join this lawsuit. 

Volker said he believes the sudden excitement around the LBAM may have been artificially created by the makers of the pesticide used to eradicate the moth—Suterra of Bend, Oregon.  

As for the governor’s move to delay spraying by testing first, Nan Wishner, chair of Albany’s Integrated Pest Management Task Force, e-mailed the Planet: “Looks to me like the safety testing is all acute tests, meaning 30-minute exposure, so this would be no more testng than was done of the pesticide sprayed last fall—i.e., it would still mean there would be no long-term human exposure testing only short-term acute exposure. And it is not clear whether the tests ... would be only of the active ingredient ... or of the whole formula of the pesticide.” 

In a prepared statement, the governor said, “I am confident that the additional tests will reassure Californians that we are taking the safest, most progressive approach to ridding our state of this very real threat to our agriculture, environment and economy.”