"EFFICIENT" NOT THE SAME AS EFFECTIVE

According to CropLife America, “Use of pesticides protects endangered species.” It's only natural, then, that the pesticide industry lobbying group would welcome new rules, issued July 29, weakening pesticide regulations related to the Endangered Species Act.

Under the revised pesticide policy, EPA has greater authority to determine on its ‘own’ (industry influence notwithstanding) whether pesticides in line for federal approval would adversely affect species listed under the act. Previously, under the Endangered Species Act, the agency’s evaluation had to be agreed upon by the Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. If either FWS or NMFS disagreed with EPA about the safety of a pesticide, the two sides were required to enter into consultation.

“Consultation ensures that the EPA will benefit from agency expertise and receive comprehensive scientific information regarding locations, population trends, and threats to the survival of imperiled species,” stated the Center for Biological Diversity prior to the policy change. “Consultation is designed to protect endangered wildlife by ensuring the EPA’s pesticide registrations do not jeopardize endangered species, but it also benefits public health by forcing the EPA to thoroughly assess the harmful effects of pesticides.”

EPA: Evading Procedure Agency

Strikingly, EPA failed to complete a single consultation since 1993, though not because its assessments were uncontested. For example, an April 2004 draft letter from NMFS stated that it did not support some of EPA’s findings. The Center for Biological Diversity’s June report, Silent Spring Revisited, documents several cases in which FWS or NMFS has raised red flags about pesticides harming endangered or threatened species.

In recent years, environmental groups had filed a series of lawsuits against EPA due to its procedural failure to hold consultations. In January, one decision resulted in establishing no-spray buffer zones near salmon streams in California, Oregon and Washington, restricting the use of 30 pesticides that had been approved by EPA despite NMFS’ concerns that the pesticides could destroy aquatic life necessary for salmon survival. Similar lawsuits involving a variety of species are currently proceeding elsewhere.

Yet the agency isn’t about to let the courts take away its rubber stamp. By eliminating the legal obligation for inter-agency consultation, the new rules are designed to prevent future lawsuits that would hold EPA accountable for its neglect. In the euphemistic jargon of a government press release announcing the policy change, EPA’s absolution from accountability creates a “workable and efficient framework.”

En(task)forcing CropLife America’s interests

On January 15 th, EPA came under attack by a lawsuit, separate from but related to the issue of consultations, accusing the agency of allowing a task force to wield undue influence over policy decisions, thus violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The suit was brought by Earthjustice on behalf of five environmental groups.

Fourteen members of the agro-chemical industry and absolutely no members of the public sit on the FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act) Task Force. Its membership overlaps neatly with that of CropLife America, including companies such as BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, Dupont Ag Products, Monsanto and Syngenta. Earthjustuce’s Patti Goldman stated, “EPA is letting the pesticide industry have inside influence over the fate of endangered species.”

CropLife America’s lobbying of the EPA has promoted the agenda that the agency should be free of the meddling science of FWS and NMFS. “The… idea is to get rid of any biological review from any expert in the species at all," said Kristin Boyles of Earthjustice. Less review, less restriction. The new rules of July 29 th demonstrate that environmental policy is bending to the long-time wishes of CropLife America’s members.

CropLife America contends that EPA’s science alone is up to the task. In a press release responding to the new rules that fulfilled its wishes, CropLife America states that EPA subjects pesticides to “rigorous scientific scrutiny” before deeming them safe for endangered species, making the input of FWS and NMFS unnecessary. However, the EPA’s science is filled with holes and flaws:

• The EPA uses Aquatic Life Criteria (threshold levels of contamination for pesticides) to determine whether aquatic habitats are contaminated with levels of pesticides that are harmful to endangered species. But Aquatic Life Criteria are far from adequate protections. Only one-third of herbicides and less than one-half of insecticides have Aquatic Life Criteria, leaving the majority of pesticides without a threshold level to measure the safety of endangered species.

• The Natural Resources Defense Council has pointed out that EPA overrides restrictions on pesticide use in the Pacific Northwest by regularly announcing emergency declarations of pest outbreaks.

• Last November, disregarding multiple studies highlighting the health risks to humans and wildlife posed by the herbicide altrazine, EPA made a deal with altrazine’s manufacturers requiring them to monitor a mere 40 of 1172 watersheds “at risk” for contamination. A trifling burden to bear in order to profit from a chemical that can inflict serious harm. Altrazine, an endocrine disruptor, has been banned in the European Union because of its harmful effects.

Under the thumb of the pesticide industry, EPA has consistently done a substandard job of following the guidelines of the Endangered Species Act, demonstrated by its inability to complete even a single inter-agency consultation since 1993. Now, thanks to the influence of the CropLife America and its members, who are bold enough to claim that pesticides protect endangered plants and animals, the EPA has the power to make its weak and inconsistent policy the only safeguard for their survival.

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