The Key West Citizen

Plant Board Unit To Cease Operations In Key West Tomorrow

Instructions Are Received—More Pineapples Brought To City

In Telegram To H. S. McClanahan

Pest control activities of the State Plant Board in Key West, in connection with the blackfly will be discontinued tomorrow, June 30, according to information given The Citizen yesterday afternoon by H. S. McClanahan, inspector in charge.

Instructions to this effect were received by Mr. McClanahan in a telegram from Charles Baldwin following a joint meeting of the State Plant Board and the Florida Citrus Commission held at Lakeland yesterday.

In line with the instructions all spraying will be discontinued June 30 and inspections suspended. Mr. McClanahan states, however, that it is expected that inspections will be resumed following the period of summer rains.

Mr. McClanahan, in reply to a question, said he was not surprised at the action of the board, and said that such action was logical and to be expected, in view of the progress which has recently been made in the eradication effort. The quarantine on the removal from Key West of host material of the blackfly will be maintained for the present.

Practically all of those who were sent here to carry on the work as inspectors will leave Key West, some of them left this morning, but Mr. McClanahan is to remain here assisting in the administration of the various federal and state quarantine regulations affecting the movement of plant material into and from Key West, and will have supervision of the inspection work when it is resumed in the fall.

The approximate monthly distribution of salaries and wages during the time the pest eradication program has been carried out in Key West since the discovery of the blackfly, has been $8,000, much of this has been paid to Key Westers of whom there were 60 employed and five of these were deputy sheriffs.

In addition to this sum in salaries local dealers received the benefits from another $1,000 which was expended for the purchase of materials used in the manufacture of spraying fluids, and other items, it was said.

There were also 16 inspectors from different sections of the state, regular attaches of the State Plant Board who were here, some with their families, during the blackfly menace.

In this list are W. R. Lyle, H. H. Frierson, J. H. Sealey, G. S. McMullen, J. H. Henderson, of Clearwater; G. H. Baker, George A. Helseth, E. G. Hume, Vero Beach; B. E. Daniel, C. R. Shepard and J. C. Bell, Winter Haven; Don Grace, and P. E. Frierson, Eustis; J. W. Ludlum and L. S. Light, Jr., Miami; C. E. Shepard, Orlando.

Most of these attaches of the board who were active in the roles of inspectors left over the highway this morning, and it is expected the others will leave tomorrow.