Last updated 13 months ago 
TRUCKEE, CA - The questions are always the same as cars and trucks cross the California border on Interstate 80 near Truckee.
"Where are you coming from? Do you have any produce or plants?" The queries come from California Department of Food and Agriculture inspectors at the year-old border station.
Commercial semi-trucks have always been subject to checks. But budget cuts stopped the inspection of private vehicles in 2004.
Truckee Border Station Manager Daniel Rudolph said $7 million was poured into an effort to stop destructive pests and plants from entering California last year. "We have five million cars passing through here every year. That's about 10,000 cars a day," Rudolph said. "And we find a lot of pests at this station especially."
Inspectors looked through trunks and on the inside of cars. A man driving a pick-up was asked to pull over. Inspectors had noticed dry, hay-like material in the back of the pick-up.
Rudolph grabbed some plastic bags and started dumping the stuff inside. "This is white top hoary crest, a B-rated weed," he said. Rudolph opened his hand and pointed, "You can see we have seeds here and they have been blowing off all along the highway as he was driving. This stuff spreads like wildfire. It gets into to alfalfa crops and other fields and takes over."
The driver apologized as he helped throw the weeds away. He explained he used it to feed his horses in Idaho. "Maybe their rules aren't as strict there," Rudolph said.
A boat pulled beside the truck and inspectors started running their hands over it, looking underneath and poking their fingers in holes. They were looking for zebra and quagga mussels.
"These zebra and quagga mussels have ruined lakes and streams back East," said Rudolph. "We want to make sure everything is dry. The mussels can live for several days out of water. They sneak in by attaching themselves to the hull or gimbal housing."
But the biggest problem inspectors have is fresh produce, according to Rudolph. That's because pests can hitchhike into the state unseen aboard apricots, oranges, cherries, etc.
Rudolph showed off the contraband room which contained a variety of fruit taken from travelers. He dumped some cherries into a grinder, doused them with warm water and poured them into a glass dish that was illuminated from below.
Then he used a magnifying glass to peer into the water. "If there are any bugs here, they'll crawl out and sink to the bottom," said Rudolph.
The batch of cherries was clean but Rudolph showed us a small glass tube containing a bug that came out of another batch just one hour earlier. "That's a cherry fruit fly," he said. "It makes the cherries spoil faster."
"Last year we submitted 800 insects to our entomology lab in Sacramento," Rudolph said. "And of those 800, about 220 to 230 were significant pests."
Not too far away, inspectors used a creeper board to roll underneath a recreational vehicle and check the undercarriage with a flashlight. They were searching for gypsy moths, a pest that defoliates and severely weakens trees.
RV owner Chris Kluckhune of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, said, "I understand (the inspection). It's no problem at all. It only takes a few extra minutes and if it protects the state, that's great."
Rudolph said it's important that travelers do their part to protect lakes, rivers and the state's agriculture industry. "One inspector makes one good find like cherry fruit fly and they're saving the state hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said.
News10/KXTV
