House and Senate Looking for Solution to EPA Registration Issue
House introduces legislation while Senate asks for court delay.
Compiled by staff
Published: Mar 4, 2011
Representatives Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, and Joe Baca, D-Calif., have introduced H.R. 872. This bipartisan bill will greatly reduce the regulatory burdens posed by the National Cotton Council V. EPA case. According to Farm Bureau, H.R. 872 provides the legislative solution that will permanently remove the specter of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits for pesticide applications. The bill has the backing of House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., John Mica, R-Fla., and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who are original cosponsors.
The American Farm Bureau Federation believes time is of the essence, seeking action now. Farm Bureau says it provides a permanent solution to the regulatory quagmire of duplicative pesticide permitting requirements facing farmers, ranchers and others who use pesticides. Unless Congress takes action, people who apply legally registered pesticides will have to jump through another regulatory hoop, this one a federal permit under the Clean Water Act.
Farm Bureau believes having to go through a senseless permit process to apply a safe and already approved products will improve neither food safety nor the environment. With it set to become effective on April 9, just weeks away, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., has requested a court delay of the deadline. In fact, in a letter to EPA, Stabenow has asked that agency to request a court delay.
Stabenow is asking EPA how it plans to implement the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Stabenow wrote that this stay is necessary to prevent widespread confusion regarding Clean Water Act permitting obligations that could arise for hundreds of thousands of regulated entities nationwide, including farms and timberlands.
"It is my understanding that neither EPA nor States with delegated National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System programs are sufficiently prepared to implement the permitting requirements," Stabenow wrote. She believes that providing additional time will give the relevant regulatory agencies enough time to properly implement the Court's 2009 ruling, which made applications of aquatic pesticides subject to NPDES permitting requirements.
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Tagged: EPA, farm, Farm Bureau, pesticide, cotton
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