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Bay Area escapes aerial spraying, for now

Posted at 10:48 AM on 25 Apr 2008

A plan to spray Santa Cruz County with synthetic pheromones must be postponed until an environmental review is completed, a county judge ruled Thursday. The spraying, an attempt by agriculture officials to curb the invasion of the crop-gobbling light brown apple moth, was to begin in Santa Cruz County in June and expand to seven other Bay Area counties in August. But many of the 7 million residents of to-be-sprayed areas have been protesting mightily, pointing out that previous spraying in Santa Cruz coincided with numerous complaints of eye and respiratory irritation.

sources: Santa Cruz Sentinel, The New York Times

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Comments: (1 comment)

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Grist Headline Wrong

From the first sentence of the Santa Cruz Sentinel article: "The state will not be allowed to spray pesticide over Santa Cruz County in June after a judge ordered California leaders to complete an environmental review first."

This ruling only applies to Santa Cruz County, which is not in the Bay Area. The Bay Area is still at risk. I have been trying to find out whether any Bay Area cities (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley) are also planning to sue, but have only gotten an answer from a press intermediary from the SF city attorney's office saying that they're confident that because a lawsuit here would raise the same facts and issues as the Santa Cruz suit, it would be politically unfeasible to spray here without first doing environmental review. That's not at all sufficient as far as I'm concerned, and I might organize a private lawsuit if a city doesn't step up.

by Wolverine at 1:56 PM on 25 Apr 2008

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