2008 Year in Review

Well it’s been an interesting year, here at Xasáuan Today. We’ve looked at the Monterey Peninsula’s water supply problems and picked apart the county’s transportation dilemma. We’ve questioned development on eroding beaches and dissected the Light Brown Apple Moth. We’ve chimed in on local political issues. We’ve gone on some bike rides, examined some mushrooms, and even found time for a visit to Pat Springs.

But nothing gets attention quite like a fire.

Moth Spray Blowback Begins

Yesterday might have been the beginning of the end for the California Department of Agriculture’s Light Brown Apple Moth Spraying program.

Apple Moth Update

Don’t you just love how the State of California, which doesn’t have enough money to fix its roads, maintain its schools, or keep its State Parks open, can still find the cash to fly around in planes spraying untested chemicals on you and your property and can even find a little more of your tax money to use to pay people to lie to you about it?

The Apple Moth Menace

We were a bit surprised to wake up in the middle of the night last fall to find a plane relentlessly passing back and forth over our house spraying moth pheromones. Especially, since we don’t even live in the area that was supposed to be sprayed. But hey, nobody’s perfect and even in the age of GPS units and so on it’s still probably more than a little confusing to go flying around so close to the deck on a dark night. We’re just happy they didn’t fly into our house.

All this midnight spraying of people and property, was bound to attract attention and it sure enough did. Far more attention than the California Department of Food & Agriculture had been expecting, apparently. And people had questions. Questions like:

Where did the Light Brown Apple Moth come from and how great a danger does it pose to our crops?

How likely is it that the pheromone spray will actually eradicate the moth?

Is the pheromone spray toxic to people?

Is it toxic for plants or other animals?

Will it disrupt the lifecycle of other (native) species with possibly serious consequences?

And, of course, what, exactly, is in the spray anyway?

Had the Dept. of Ag been able to provide some hard facts in answer to these questions, they might have gained public trust and headed off at least some of the controversy now dogging their Apple Moth Eradication Program. But they were monumentally unprepared for the task.