Pest control fee will help fruit industry

by David Lester
Yakima Herald-Republic

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All county property owners will begin contributing to a program next year to fight pests that threaten access to markets for the county's largest economic sector, its fruit industry.

Yakima County commissioners recently agreed to impose an assessment that will cost every parcel owner in the county $1 per year.

Commercial fruit orchards will pay the parcel fee as well as an additional fee of $1.50 per acre of fruit trees to pay for control programs.

The fees are likely to show up on property tax statements mailed out early next year. Government-owned, range and dryland property are exempt from the fee.

The assessments were sought by the newly reconstituted county Horticulture Pest and Disease Board, authorized by state law to control pests that threaten commercial tree fruits.

Jack Watson of Grandview, a commercial grower and retired Benton County extension agent, said the $197,500 annual assessment will focus on abandoned and unsprayed orchards as well as backyard fruit trees that are a source of codling moth, apple maggot, San Jose scale and cherry fruit fly.

He said the apple maggot, a pest that is a threat to markets in Canada and elsewhere, doesn't exist in commercial orchards because growers control them as part of their normal pest management programs.

Agents for pest boards in other counties spend most of their time dealing with infestations in residential areas.

"It has become an urban problem," Watson said. "We feel the tree fruit people have to pay because it is part of their problem. We also feel the homeowners have to shoulder some responsibility."

Keith Mathews, manager of the Yakima Valley Growers-Shippers Association and a nonvoting member of the board, said the threat of codling moth infestations in exported fruit could cost the industry and the local economy access to a $60 million market in Taiwan.

The losses quickly mount because that money is lost to the local economy where it would be used to buy goods and services, he said.

The pest board has hired a full-time coordinator who will begin tackling the problem of unsprayed orchards as well as urban pests.

Until assessment funds are available next year, the board has access to interim funding from state programs that use fruit inspection fees to maintain an existing quarantine on apple maggots in the Upper Yakima Valley.

County commission chairman Ron Gamache said commissioners agreed to the assessment based on a public hearing in May when no one objected to the assessment. Fruit growers testified the additional funding is urgently needed.

Previously, the county had contributed about $22,000 a year from its tax revenues to support the pest board. Those funds will be replaced by the assessment.

"Everyone needs to help out," Gamache said. "We have to protect this industry so their markets aren't impacted."

 

* David Lester can be reached at 577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.