A bipartisan group of House lawmakers yesterday introduced a bill that would exempt farmers, local governments and other pesticide users from the need to obtain an extra Clean Water Act (CWA) permit for spraying chemicals over water.

The legislation, sponsored by senior members of the Transportation and Infrastructure and Agriculture committees, would avert the need for U.S. EPA to approve two types of pesticide permits in response to a 2009 federal appeals court ruling. That decision, in what is known as the National Cotton Council case, deemed the existing permit program under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) was insufficient and called on EPA to begin issuing CWA permits starting next month.

"Congress never intended for farmers and ranchers to meet additional permit requirements for pesticide applications under FIFRA," Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, the Agriculture panel's senior Democrat, said in a statement on the measure, whose authors also include Transportation Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.), Rep. Robert Gibbs (R-Ohio) and Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.).

"This bill will relieve producers from meeting a costly regulatory burden that would have little to no environmental benefit."

Environmental advocates, and some Democrats, counter that CWA permitting would offer a major advantage over the FIFRA system by requiring more in-depth analysis of pesticides' impact on water supplies and on the potential for safer alternative chemicals. The pesticide industry's main trade group, for its part, hiked its lobbying spending by 58 percent in the final quarter of last year -- in part due to escalated entreaties for congressional action on the double-permit issue (Greenwire, Feb. 24).

EPA's assistant administrator for pesticide programs, Steven Bradbury, defended the efficacy of the agency's FIFRA permitting during House testimony last month (E&E Daily, Feb. 17).

On the other side of the Capitol, two Senate Republicans are working on a counterpart bill with hopes of fast-tracking the issue thanks to the newly installed House GOP majority.

The Senate Agriculture Committee's top Republican, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, told E&E Daily this week that he and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) -- a former senior Agriculture panel member -- are in staff-level talks on their own pesticide double-permitting bill.

The upper-chamber measure likely would mirror a proposal offered last year by the Agriculture panel's then-chairwoman, former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (R-Ark.), Chambliss said. "The issue is still the same as last year," he explained.

Roberts said yesterday that he has discussed timing issues with House Republican counterparts. "We'd like to make it possible that there's not 350,000 applications" in the mix from farmers seeking pesticide permits, he said.