By Aaron Porter

ELLSWORTH — A bill crafted at the urging of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association could limit pesticide spraying to control the browntail moth population.

Since its introduction by Rep. Leila Percy (D-Phippsburg) last month, LD 1657 has bounced from the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee to the Agriculture Committee, but has yet to be seriously addressed by legislators.

For an explanation of why lobstermen are concerned about pesticide spraying on land, look to Long Island Sound where a lobster die-off in the late 1990s devastated the lobster fishery, and still mystifies researchers. In the scramble to identify a cause for the death of a lobster population and a fishery, insecticide sprays, which were being used in the area to control West Nile virus-bearing mosquitoes, became a possible culprit.

While there has been no specific relationship to pesticide spraying and the Long Island Sound lobster mortality, Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said lobstermen are concerned that many pesticides are toxic to lobsters. The association doesn’t want to take any risks with the resource.

State Lobster Biologist Carl Wilson agrees with the basic approach. “If you can take reasonable measures to reduce the risk to marine organisms that’s good,” he said. In the case of Dimilin, the pesticide sprayed around Casco Bay communities to kill browntail moths, its potential impact on lobsters isn’t debatable.

“Dimilin is a molt inhibitor,” Wilson said. Sprayed on the browntail moth caterpillars, it prevents them from changing into moths. “It has similar effects on other arthropods,” Wilson warned. That includes all insects and crustaceans.

And it’s not just Dimilin. According to Wilson a lot of pesticides for mosquitoes and ants will affect arthropods in the marine environment.

Wilson stressed that there are no scientific studies proving or disproving Dimilin has impacted lobster in the wild. That sort of scientific certainty isn’t what lobstermen are looking for. For them, the precautionary principle makes most sense to preserve the thriving lobster industry.

“Why do you want to play Russian roulette with something as important as the lobster fishery?” asked bill co-sponsor Sen. Dennis Damon (D-Hancock County). To Damon and many lobstermen, the idea of keeping substances known to be toxic to lobsters out of the marine environment is sound. Crafting legislation to achieve that end is another step entirely.

The bill is not a ban on spraying for browntail moth. Percy said the intent is to have a buffer zone to keep the pesticides out of the water.

The bill proposes that aerial spraying could only be done more than 1,000 feet from the high tide line; a mist blower must be more than 500 feet from the high tide line; and a hydraulic applicator, more than 50 feet.

Damon said the original bill proposed all pesticides to be limited by the same rules. However, he said, there was concern as to whether blueberry growers would be able to spray crops efficiently.  So it was restricted to browntail moth spraying.

Lebelle Hicks, the pesticide toxicologist or the Maine State Board of Pesticide Control, said she is concerned the bill is intended to fix a problem that might not exist — with measures that might not be effective. “Scientifically we’ve got no data that says it gets into the water,” she said of the Dimilin. “And if you set the buffer zones, is it going to keep it out?

“If the applicators do what they’re supposed to do, which is spray when the wind is away from the coast, it shouldn’t be a problem,” she said.

As a scientist, Hicks said she’s frustrated by the lack of data upon which to base any of the measures in the bill. And then there are the unintended consequences. “Every time someone proposes something like this, the word ‘precedent’ comes up,” she warned.

Restrictions imposed on browntail moth spraying could more easily be imposed on other pesticide uses once the law is on the books, whether or not the measures have been effective.

For Hancock County, the threat from browntail moth is slight, so the bill would have little impact. However, in Southern Maine, the intense irritation caused by contact with the nettling hairs from the caterpillars plagues numerous residents, especially on the islands of Casco Bay.

Spraying to kill the caterpillars has been a matter of heated debate in many communities, even before the lobster concerns were brought to the table. Some communities decided not to go forward with spraying programs, and in others, individual property owners could ask to opt out, reducing the efficiency of aerial spraying.

The proposed bill could provide guidelines and reduce concerns about contamination of the marine environment, but the desires of individual property owners still would have to be taken into account in spraying.