AgraQuest, Inc.
Californians for Pesticide Reform
Environment California
California Coalition for Food and Farming
Clean Water Action
Natural Resources Defense Council
Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles
Physicians for Social Responsibility - SF Bay Area
Sierra Club California
Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation
February 10, 2006
Ms. MaryAnn Warmerdam
Director
Department of Pesticide Regulation
1001 I Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
ATTN: Mark Rentz
RE: Comments on the Recommendations of the Pest Management in the 21st Century Working Group to the Pest Management Advisory Committee
Dear Ms. Warmerdam:
The undersigned organizations are pleased to submit comments on the recommendations submitted to the DPR Pest Management Advisory Committee by the Pest Management in the 21st Century Working Group. First we wish to compliment you and the department for seeking this work product from the PMAC. Your request acknowledged that DPR needs to think strategically about how it can best use its resources to achieve the department’s statutory mission and its policy goals, taking into account the state’s changing demography and giving full consideration to the need for results that protect the environment, achieve social equity, and are economically viable. You also asked the working group to consider voluntary, incentive-based actions to implement integrated pest management (IPM).
While the department’s traditional regulatory functions of registering pesticides for use in California and taking enforcement actions against misuse of pesticides must remain central to its mission, we believe DPR should become more active in promoting successful pest management strategies that achieve the goals listed above, and we agree that voluntary, incentive-based approaches should play an important, though not exclusive, role in those activities.
The working group focused on two programmatic areas:
· Increased emphasis on IPM in the urban and agricultural settings.
· Enhanced compliance and enforcement efforts by the department.
We offer the following comments on the specific recommendations by the working group.
1. Pest Management Alliance (p. 4): We strongly support the recommendation that the department’s IPM and Pest Management Alliance grant programs be revitalized and we urge the department to give high priority to securing funding to restart these programs. The PMA program in particular is designed to extend the use of innovative pest management practices beyond early adopters to a broad range of users within a specific commodity group or sector. DPR has supported successful PMA projects among both agricultural commodity groups and urban use settings such as schools, and we believe they should be continued and expanded.
2. Encouraging investments in IPM strategies (p. 4): The working group identifies several strategies to encourage investments in IPM, including cost sharing arrangements through grants and bond funds; reduced regulatory fees and increased tax deductions to offset the increased cost of IPM; streamlined regulatory requirements as an incentive to adopt best management practices (BMPs) for IPM; and special market recognition of IPM-grown products to increase market value. We note that Proposition 50 included bond funds for agricultural producers who adopt practices that will reduce their impacts on water quality and support that program. We also support incentives to adopt BMPs, provided, as the working group makes clear, that health and environmental quality are not compromised. We also believe the recipients of these incentives have an obligation to document, through monitoring, the results of their use of BMPs. This back-end accountability is necessary for two reasons: to ensure the BMPs are actually being implemented and to help document which BMPs actually are effective and which ones are not.
3. IPM continuing education (pp. 4-5) – While a number of pest control advisors have become much more sophisticated in their practices, these advancements are very uneven across the industry, and the economic incentive to oversell pesticides is an unavoidable fact of life in an industry where many PCAs are directly employed by, or receive heavy financial incentives from, pesticide manufacturers and distributors. The working group’s recommendation to include IPM as a mandatory part of the PCA’s continuing education program is a minimum step that should be taken.
4. Reduced risk pesticides (p. 5): We applaud DPR for the steps it already has taken to accelerate the approval of biologically-based pesticides and urge the department to seek further ways to encourage the use of these low-risk pesticides when they have been shown to be efficacious in specific pest control settings. California is home to some of the most innovative products of this sort and they should benefit from all appropriate regulatory advantages. Likewise, some California commodity groups – winegrapes, for example – have been very innovative in developing new equipment and application techniques to minimize off-target impacts of pesticides. The experience of the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission – where the innovative practices developed by the commission and some of its most innovative growers have been widely adopted by the commission members -- should be a model for DPR and the agricultural industry. We also support the recommendation to develop and use pesticide environmental impact models that evaluate the risks associated with pesticides, as a way to help farm managers make pesticide use decisions, especially to help protect farmworkers and “fence-line” communities.
5. Pesticide Registration (p, 6): The working group notes that biological and pest management alternatives may not be adequately considered in special registrations under Section 18 and 24(c). We believe it is also true that DPR gives inadequate consideration to the “feasible alternatives” determination that is a required part of the routine registration of pesticides. We urge the department to review its analysis of feasible alternatives in the registration process and to place restrictions on the use of a pesticide when feasible alternatives that are demonstrably safer for public health and the environment are available for use on a target commodity.
6. Urban Pest Management (pp. 6-7): As the working group notes, some of the greatest pest management challenges exist in the urban setting, yet DPR budget only a small portion of its budget to urban pest management. We agree that DPR should reassess its allocation of resources with an eye toward implementing an urban pest management strategy that emphasizes biologically integrated IPM.
There is no doubt that on a pound-for-pound basis, misuse and overuse of pesticides in the urban setting is much greater than in the agricultural setting. Many residential pesticide users are frighteningly uninformed about pesticides and simply subscribe to the “more is better” theory. As a result, some of the most harmful environmental impacts of pesticides are in the urban setting, especially on water quality from urban runoff of pesticide-laden water into stormwater and local streams and concentrated indoor use. It is also clear that IPM practices are very viable for a broad range of urban pest management problems, yet they are woefully underused.
For these reasons we agree with the working group that there are many untapped opportunities to improve pest management and reduce pesticide use in the urban setting, and that a full range of actions should be pursued, including educating maintenance gardeners and other pest control licensees about how to use IPM and reduce impacts; creating incentives for urban PCOs to use IPM techniques; restricting the retail availability of high-risk home use pesticides; providing incentives for retailers who promote safer alternatives; and pursuing a statewide public education campaign in partnership with local governments, the university, agricultural commissioners, and NGOs to promote urban IPM.
7. Structural Pest Control Board (p. 7): The Structural Pest Control Board has adopted a rule that is entirely contrary to the adoption of IPM and other safer pest control practices and that, we believe, may be illegal. Its rule prohibits product manufacturers from making any claims about their product’s environmental or public health benefits, even if the accuracy of those claims is documented. Under the guise of protecting the public against false claims, the board is actually protecting the most recalcitrant segments of the pesticide industry from competition in the marketplace. We strongly urge DPR to pursue all means within the administration to rectify this regressive and unfair rule.
8. Statewide IPM Certification Program (p. 10): We agree with the conclusions of the working group about the merits of a statewide program to certify the use of IPM, which can build off several successful models in the agricultural sector. But we also agree that it will require more work among a number of agencies and stakeholders. We therefore support the recommendation that a working group be formed to undertake the specific work of developing a statewide IPM certification program.
9. County level enforcement (p. 12): The department has given increased attention in recent years to improving compliance with pesticide rules and taking enforcing against violators. As DPR itself has noted, enforcement activities vary a great deal across counties, and enforcement is weakest in some counties with the most significant violations. We support the series of recommendations dealing with improving enforcement at the county level, by auditing county ag commissioner outreach programs to ensure consistency; completing pesticide investigations in a more timely manner; structuring fines to ensure they deter violations; focusing on areas of greatest concern, including repeat offenders and serious violations; and identifying opportunities to promote IPM practices during pesticide use permitting.
10. Adequate funding for licensing and related activities (pp. 12-13): Licensing fees should be adequate to cover the cost of administering the license and carrying out other regulatory activities directly related to the license, including compliance and enforcement. We also agree with the working group’s recommendation that DPR evaluate whether the existing system provides adequate recourse for parties affected by pesticide violations – especially farmworkers and members of fenceline communities – and whether the license fee is an appropriate source of funds to provide that recourse.
11. Urban Pesticide Use Enforcement (pp. 13-14): As stated above (#6), public education can be an effective means of improving compliance with pesticide rules in the urban setting. But public education is not a complete substitute for traditional enforcement actions in the urban setting. We believe the department, as part of a statewide urban pest management strategy, should undertake a close review of the current state of urban pesticide use, compliance, and enforcement, and then work with local agencies to develop new methods to improve compliance and carry out enforcement in the urban setting. DPR has given much attention in recent years to improving compliance and enforcement in the agricultural setting. It should do the same now for urban pesticide use.
As the bulk of our remarks indicate, we agree with the working group’s emphasis on improving urban pest management and on focusing on IPM as an organizing principle for pest management statewide, in both the urban and agricultural sectors. We believe the working group has offered a number of sound recommendations that deserve the department’s attention. We urge the department to embrace these ideas and lead the effort to develop a statewide pest management strategy that will serve all Californians in the 21st century.
Sincerely,
Pam Marrone, PhD
President and Founder
AgraQuest, Inc.
1530 Drew Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
David Chatfield, Director
Californians for Pesticide Reform
49 Powell St., Suite 530
San Francisco, CA 94102
Rachel L. Gibson
Environmental Health Advocate & Staff Attorney
Environment California
369 Broadway, Suite 200
San Francisco, CA 94133
Claudia Reid, Policy Director
California Coalition for Food and Farming
1621 13th Street, Suite B
Sacramento, CA 95814
Andria Ventura
Environmental Health Program Manager
Clean Water Action
111 New Montgomery St.
Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94105
Jonathan Kaplan
Director, Sustainable Agriculture Project
Natural Resources Defense Council
111 Sutter Street, 20th floor
San Francisco, CA 94104
Martha Dina Argüello
Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles
Director Health and Environment Programs
617 S. Olive Street , Suite 810
Los Angeles, CA 90014
Robert M. Gould, MD
President
SF Bay Area
Physicians for Social Responsibility
2288 Fulton Street, Suite 307
Berkeley, CA 94704
Bill Magavern
SeniorRepresentative
Sierra Club California
1414 K St., Ste. 500
Sacramento, CA 95814
Susan Frank
Vice President, Public Policy
Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation
60 S. Market Street, Ste. 1000
San Jose, CA 95113
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