U.S. EPA chief Lisa Jackson today sat down with a bipartisan group of Senate Agriculture Committee members in a bid to assuage their concerns about a handful of agency rules that have raised alarms among farmers and other frequent pesticide users.
The Senate meeting, which Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also attended, comes two days before Jackson is set to face tough questions from the House Agriculture Committee and one month before a court-ordered deadline for EPA to begin requiring certain pesticide users to obtain extra permits under the Clean Water Act.
Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the agriculture panel's top Republican, said in an interview that "virtually every member there" pressed Jackson on the impact of the April 9 timetable for EPA to begin issuing Clean Water Act permits for pesticide sprays over water in addition to its existing permit plan under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
"Both the chairman and I have serious concerns about it -- we're trying to get on paper precisely what the policy is," said Roberts, who described the meeting as positive and praised the committee's chief, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), for helping to organize it.
Roberts and another Agriculture panel member, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), are in talks about offering a bill to eliminate the need for the double-permitting mandate, which stemmed from a federal appeals court decision in the 2009 case National Cotton Council v. EPA (E&E Daily, March 3). But the Kansan said today that legislation on the issue, which House members of both parties already are pursuing, might not be necessary if EPA would provide more details on its permitting plans.
"It would be better if EPA could clarify their position by executive order; we wouldn't have to have a bill to begin with," said Roberts, who did not clarify what such an agency order would entail.
Other senators present at the Jackson-Vilsack meeting included Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who said afterward that he is still weighing whether to endorse legislation that would rein in EPA on the permitting issue.
Jackson told senators that "in some cases, with the permits, spraying would not be adversely affected," Nelson told reporters. "We're trying to get more information on that so we understand, so agriculture in Nebraska and across the country can appreciate what changes there are and what changes are not being made."
"What farmers believe now is that 350,000 [of them] are going to have to file individual permit" applications after the new pesticide-use system takes effect, Roberts said, but Jackson "indicated strongly that that's not the case."
Jackson's appearance tomorrow before the House Agriculture Committee could shed more light on EPA's plans to address the April 9 deadline and whether the agency would consider Stabenow's request last week for an extended stay from the court to allow more time for implementation of new permitting rules (E&ENews PM, March 3).
In addition to the pesticide permitting system, Roberts said that senators also brought up pending EPA actions on the definition of "navigable waters" under the Clean Water Act and to limit dust produced by farming operations.
Some members of Congress from rural districts have pressed EPA on its review of the national limits on particulate pollution, which is supposed to be done by October but is running late.
In a set of draft policy recommendations that were released last year, agency staffers suggested a change to the current standard for coarse particles -- a blend of air pollution that includes run-of-the-mill dust -- and some agricultural groups are arguing that the new limits would impose needless costs on farmers.
The agency's scientists said their other standard would not be harder to meet than the current limit, but an analysis by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association concluded that the change could double the number of air pollution monitors violating the standard.
Citing those types of concerns, the House attached language to its seven-month continuing resolution, passed Feb. 19, to block EPA from using its funding to change the coarse particle standards.
"The dust police rule would make it more expensive to feed America," Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said on the House floor before the lower chamber passed the amendment. "Does the EPA wish that we import all of our food, like we do crude oil? This sounds a little bit un-American to me" (Greenwire, Feb. 25).
When lawmakers pressed Jackson on that point last week, she said it was unfair to criticize the agency when it has not proposed any plan to revise the standards.
The advice from staffers, which has not yet been released in final form, said that policymakers would be justified to keep the current limit or use the new one, Jackson told members of the House Appropriations Committee. She said the agency has recently met with farmers in Iowa and Missouri to discuss their concerns.
"There's been absolutely no regulatory decision made," Jackson said.
Reporters Jeremy P. Jacobs and Gabriel Nelson contributed.
