RISE Makes Call to Action Regarding NPDES Permits

Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE) is asking green industry professionals to make their voices heard during the final phases of proposed National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) rulemaking. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be receiving comments on the proposed NPDES policies, which would require additional permitting for certain pesticide applications, through April 4.

“As you likely recall, over the last several years, activists have gone to court under the Clean Water Act to stop pesticide applications in, over or around water, and are expanding their actions to include more and more pesticide uses,” noted RISE President Allen James in a letter to members. “One Federal Court District has agreed with the activists and many needed pesticide applications have been halted or conducted under NPDES permits that are expensive and unnecessary.”
 
The new rule proposed by the EPA will relieve some of the pressure by stating that many pesticide uses do not require NPDES permits. “We are supporting the rule and are asking you to submit comments to the docket,” James adds. “However, we also want to urge the EPA to expand the language of the rule to cover all pesticide applications, but the broader language will not happen unless EPA receives strong support from the public.”

As part of this call to action, RISE has developed the following statement for use in comments to be recorded on the docket:

“Stop the unnecessary and duplicative EPA permitting of food and fiber production, wild land fire fighting, mosquito control for West Nile virus, removal of invasive and noxious weeds, and all other pesticide uses.”

Additionally, individuals are encouraged to visit the CropLife America Web site to send a similar letter to the federal docket.

According to RISE, Anti-pesticide interest groups, seeking to ban pesticides, have sued farmers and other applicators asserting that EPA-registered pesticides are subject to additional regulation under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The CWA requires applicator to obtain a NPDES permits from EPA. As a result of the lawsuits, farmers, ranchers, public health officials, natural resource managers and specialty applicators that rely on pesticides asked EPA to clarify whether they have a legal obligation to obtain an NPDES EPA permit.

In response, EPA published in February 2005 a regulation on pesticides and water and opened a 90-day comment period, which ends on April 4. The new proposed regulation states that an EPA-registered pesticide does not require an NPDES CWA permit for applications into, over, on or near water if the product is applied according to the label. However, RISE notes, EPA stopped short of ensuring that NPDES permits are not required for all registered and legal applications that fall under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

“Public health officials, mosquito control districts, irrigation districts, farmers, ranchers, foresters and specialty applicators who lawfully apply herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and rodenticides should not be limited from conducting these essential activities by unnecessary EPA Clean Water permit requirements,” James said, asking professionals to “please contact EPA and urge them to formally adopt and include in the final rule EPA’s long-standing operating approach that: the application of all agricultural and other pesticides in accordance with label directions shall not be subject to NPDES permitting requirements. EPA needs to issue a final rule that covers all pesticide applications, some of which are currently left out of the proposal.”
 
Interested individuals can visit http://ga4.org/campaign/epapermit to participate in the information and letter-writing campaign. Upon visiting the link, users will find the letter to the EPA and may edit its final two paragraphs to suit their needs, though RISE notes that the first paragraph of the ltter is standard language. Simply providing contact information and clicking “Send this message” completes the docket submission. Additionally, a “Tell me more” link provides additional background information on the NPDES issue.