Two Bay Area health and environmental groups sent a nine-point letter last week to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack and California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary A.G. Kawamura detailing flaws in the final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the light brown apple moth eradication program and asking Vilsack to end the program and associated quarantines in California.

The final EIR for the apple moth program, released by CDFA last month, still provides for aerial and ground pesticide spray of large populated areas and other controversial chemical treatments that the letter’s authors, Stop the Spray East Bay and Mothers of Marin Against the Spray, have been opposing for the past 3 years along with many other health and environmental organizations, scientists, physicians, public officials, and individual citizens.

The letter to Vilsack and Kawamura details nine significant defects of the EIR, including its failure to respond to public outcry against aerial spraying.

The final EIR targets for possible aerial spray significant portions of the San Francisco Bay Area, including parts of Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties. Treasured recreational areas such as Mt. Tamalpais, Tilden Park, and the East Bay Hills are in the spray zone.

The letter also points to CDFA’s failure to acknowledge the fact that the apple moth has been in the state for as long as 30 years without any evidence that it is the destructive pest that the CDFA has been portraying during the past three years.

The groups object to the EIR’s statement that CDFA is prepared to use warrants and law enforcement to force ground spraying on private and public property if property owners refuse. Other treatments include placement of pesticide-filled diffusers called “twist-ties.” Apple moth treatments could be used in almost any community across California, according to the EIR.

In addition to chemical treatments, the program proposes to release of hundreds of millions of irradiated moths and predatory wasps whose potential detrimental impacts on the ecosystem are downplayed in the EIR.

The apple moth program, which costs taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually, is planned to continue for seven years.

The final EIR could be approved by CDFA Secretary Kawamura as early as today. Despite the inherent conflict of interest, CDFA sponsored and prepared the EIR and has the authority to approve it under California’s environmental laws. Once the EIR is approved, apple moth treatments could begin within 30 days.

The letter’s list of other deficiencies in the EIR includes:

• CDFA’s failure to adequately investigate the more than 600 health complaints and the deaths of seabirds filed after apple moth spraying in 2007;

• CDFA’s dismissal of concern that children and pets might eat the polymer pesticide flakes now planned for aerial spraying; the EIR says, “even if quantities of Hercon Bio-Flake were ingested, the material is expected to be readily digested and eliminated with no adverse effects on the individual”;

• CDFA’s failure to address the scientific evidence that the moth is not a problem anywhere else in the world that it is an introduced species, including New Zealand and Hawaii;

• CDFA’s failure to disclose the full formulas of the pesticides it plans to use, making it impossible for the public to evaluate the health and environmental risk of the treatments;

• CDFA’s failure to address numerous problems with the science underlying the program that were identified by a National Academy of Sciences expert panel last year, including the failure to justify eradication as a feasible goal for the moth or the fact that the state’s trapping data for the moth are essentially meaningless for determining whether the moth population is spreading or growing.

The letter requests that Secretary Vilsack take immediate action to reclassify the apple moth as a non-quarantinable pest, in accordance with the evidence presented in two scientific petitions to the USDA on this topic last year, to end apple moth quarantines and stop the expensive, dangerous, unnecessary, and scientifically infeasible eradication program.

The program is funded and continuing because the apple moth is classified by the USDA as an “actionable pest of quarantine,” which triggers trade restrictions.

“There are serious health risks associated with the exposure to even minute amounts of pesticides. Children are particularly vulnerable because of their developing bodies, frequent outdoor play, and inability to eliminate toxins,” states Debbie Friedman, chair of MOMAS. “It is extremely troubling that USDA and CDFA continue to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on such an unnecessary, unsafe and poorly justified program, particularly during these tight economic times.”

“The final EIR makes clear that state officials have ignored the call to base the apple moth program on sound science,” said Nan Wishner of Stop the Spray East Bay. “CDFA has been manufacturing and cherry-picking science from the outset to try to try to justify this unnecessary, ineffective, and dangerous program, and this EIR is just one more example.

The final Environmental Impact Report can be downloaded at: http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/pdep/lbam/envimpactrpt.html .

The letter to Secretary Vilsack can be downloaded at: www.eastbay.stopthespray.org .