Rudy Can Expect Biting Remarks At Hearing

The latest in a series of public hearings on the threat of another summer of disease-bearing mosquitoes is scheduled for this Friday, and indications are that there will be few praises for the Giuliani Administrations handling of last summers surprise outbreak of encephalitis.
Although the conference is described as bipartisan, it was initiated by an irate Democrat Congressman Gary Ackerman after he was given a "duplicitous runaround" by Jerry Hauer, former head of the Mayors Office of Emergency Management.
Sponsors of the public hearing at the Flushing Library from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on March 31 are Ackerman, State Senator Frank Padavan, Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin and City Councilman Mike Abel.
The Queens Courier has learned that witnesses will include representatives of the city and state health departments, area physicians and individuals who maintain they were sickened by the citys aerial bombardment of the pesticide, malathion.
Meanwhile, health officials and legislators were nervously awaiting results of a study by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to determine whether malathion is a carcinogen. If it is, the mayor is sure to be sharply criticized for last summers massive spraying of the city. It would also provide Hillary Clinton with a powerful issue in the hotly-contested race for the U.S. Senate.
A spokesman for Ackerman said the purpose of the hearing was "to determine how the outbreak was handled last summer and what plans are being implemented to prevent a re-occurrence."
Ackerman, who was with President Clinton in India, was reportedly angered that this office wasnt notified on March 23 that state Health Commissioner Dr. Antonia C. Novello was holding a conference on the West Nile Virus in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. At that meeting, she outlined a plan to disrupt the mosquitoes reproduction, monitor mosquitoes and birds for signs of the virus, and to put in place new procedures at hospitals to catch the earliest hint of human cases.
Novellos plan includes a "West Nile Virus Bite Fighters Club," to involve youngsters. They will be asked to help eliminate or reduce mosquito breeding areas in their neighborhoods and communities.
Invitees to the March 31 hearing are scheduled to include a representative of the State Attorney Generals Office. Earlier, an aide to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had warned the citys corporation counsel to notify Giuliani and Health Commissioner Neal L. Cohen not to call the pesticide malathion a safe product, since doing so is prohibited by the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Concern over a possible new wave of malathion spraying was touched off last week when city health officials reported that up to 1,900 Queens residents were infected by the West Nile Virus as a result of bites from the Culex pipiens mosquito that breeds in stagnant water in everywhere from unused swimming pools to old tires.