LBA Moth Spray Hearing at SCC Board of Supervisors

A public hearing by the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors to consider the issue of aerial spraying of a synthetic pheromone product (untested on humans) to combat the light brown apple moth will take place on

Tuesday - Oct. 16 - 7pm
@ the Supervisors' Chambers
5th floor of the County Bldg. (corner of Water & Ocean).

There will be representatives from the California Department of Agriculture who will explain the proposed program, followed by hopefully lots of testimony from lots of concerned citizens. A similar public hearing happened on Tuesday, Oct. 9 @ the Santa Cruz City Council mtg., after which the city council voted 4 (Porter, Madrigal, Rotkin, Reilly) to 3 (Coonerty, Mathews, Robinson) to mount or join a lawsuit to stop the spraying at least for now till more information can be gathered. Let's show up and convince the Supervisors to join the city in this lawsuit. Phone calls, letters, and emails before Tuesday's hearing are also encouraged.

More information about this issue can be found at http://1hope.org. This is the website of HOPE (Help Our Peninsula's Environment), the folks that have mounted the lawsuit to stop, somewhat belatedly, the spraying in Monterey County. After the first spraying was done in Monterey in September, this group received over 100 affidavits from citizens claiming to have had adverse reactions to the spray.

The Supervisors can be phoned @ 831-454-2200 and emailed @:

jan.beautz [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us
tony.campos [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us
neal.coonerty [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us
ellen.pirie [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us
mark.stone [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us