House Agriculture Committee OKs Farm Bill With Ban on Permits for Pesticide Spraying

The House Agriculture Committee adopted a farm bill July 12 that would provide $57 billion for conservation programs over the next 10 years and prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring Clean Water Act discharge permits for pesticide spraying on or near water bodies. In addition to the pesticide spraying language, the legislation includes environmental provisions on pesticide registration, biotechnology in crop production, pine beetle infestations in the West, research on bed bugs, and procedures for forestry projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The pesticide-spraying language, taken from a bill (H.R. 872) that passed by the House in March 2011, would bar the agency from requiring National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits for pesticides that already are registered for use, sale, and distribution under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. In another environmental provision, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) successfully offered an amendment that would exempt the U.S. Forest Service from providing public comment and environmental appeals of day-to-day “routine” activities in national forests. Under NEPA, routine activities that do not have an environmental impact can be grouped as categorical exclusions and are exempt from detailed environmental impact analyses. However, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled in March that the Forest Service is required to provide a public comment and an environmental appeals process for what Thompson said was “something as minor as repairing a power line.” “Under this ruling, this decision will add at least 30 days, and up to 145 days, for all these noncontroversial, everyday activities,” Thompson said. Thompson said there are 600 routine projects that are tied up at the Forest Service because of this requirement...more