Out on a limb to save our trees

TROXLER E-mail: Click here Archive

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist

© St. Petersburg Times
published June 5, 2002

Should the state be able to come into your yard and destroy your citrus trees to fight the spread of citrus canker -- even if your tree appears healthy?

The Legislature says yes, that's the law.

The state's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says yes, all trees within a certain distance of an infected tree must be destroyed.

But at the moment, a local judge down in Broward County says no. The state can destroy only trees proven to be infected. The state is appealing this ruling.

To those fighting the state, the question is: Can citizens really be forced to sacrifice their private property, their seemingly healthy trees, despite their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure?

To the state, the issue is: Does a single citizen really have the "right" to harbor on his property, potentially, a disease that could wipe out every citrus tree in Florida?

Citrus canker is a bacterial infection that first appears as oily lesions on leaves and fruit. Eventually it renders trees barren and leafless. It is spread by rain, by wind and by humans. There is no known cure. Since the first outbreak in 1910, the only known method of eradication has been destroying trees.

Florida's current canker outbreak began in 1995, near the presumed entry point of Miami International Airport. Since then, some 1.5-mllion trees in commercial groves, and more than 600,000 on residential property, have been destroyed. (That comparison somewhat discredits the conspiracy theory that the state is trampling over homeowners to protect the citrus industry.)

Most of this has occurred in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, but canker has shown up in other places too. Two years ago in southeastern Hillsborough County, more than 2,000 trees were destroyed in a 20-square-mile area around Sun City Center. Only this spring were that area's residents given the all-clear to plant replacements.

The state's eradication program has been on-again, off-again as citizens and local governments fought it court.

This past spring the Legislature tried to settle things in favor of the state. It passed a law allowing "countywide" or "areawide" search warrants. Relying on the Department of Agriculture's science, the law also declared that all trees within 1,900 feet of an infected tree would be considered "exposed."

But on May 24, Broward Circuit Judge J. Leonard Fleet rejected both of these ideas in the strongest possible language. The very notion of areawide search warrants, he said, was a throwback to eras in which the people "were at the mercy and whim of royalty." He also rejected the science of the 1,900-foot rule.

Terry McElroy, a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, contends that Fleet's ruling will only allow canker to spread. Trees within the range of exposure are in as much danger of being infected, he says, as children who've been to a birthday party where one kid turned out to have chicken pox.

Had the state been allowed to finish in 2000, before an earlier court order, it would have finished the job of eradication with only 60,000 more trees, McElroy says. Now, enough new cases have been detected (most recently last week in Brevard County) that the requisite number is 200,000 trees.

McElroy said that 80 to 90 percent of people notified by the state "don't like it, but they recognize the necessity." But there are still too many citizens who refuse to make it practical to get individual search warrants, he says.

My amateur's reading of past court cases is that no person has the "right" to harbor a public threat. There is plenty of precedent dealing with smallpox vaccinations, health quarantines, building inspections and contaminated food supply.

Therefore, the case hinges not on grand constitutional issues, but merely on the state's quality of scientific proof. Let the appeals courts focus on whether there is a rational relationship between a 1,900-foot radius and stopping the spread of the disease.

I do not like the idea of state agents chopping down my orange tree. But I like even less the idea of a Florida without any orange trees at all, going the way of the spreading chestnut tree, not to mention the elms on Elm Street.

- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright