z Representing the Plant Science Industry z

1156 15th St. N.W. z Washington, D.C. 20005 z 202.296.1585 z 202.463.0474 fax z www.croplifeamerica.org 

March 3, 2010 

Ms. Allison Wiedeman 

Rural Branch Chief 

Office of Water 

US Environmental Protection Agency 

1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 

Washington, DC 20460 

Dear Ms. Wiedeman: 

At the request of EPA, CropLife America and RISE in November, 2009, 

provided several recommendations for Notices of Intent (NOIs) to obtain coverage 

under EPA’s upcoming pesticide NPDES general permit. We recommended that 

decisions-makers be the entity responsible for NOI submissions, not for-hire 

applicators, because of the differences in available resources and advanced 

knowledge. Based on that presumption, we also recommended annual treatment 

thresholds for NOI submission, based on conversations we had had with various 

affected stakeholder groups who use the products that CLA’s members manufacture 

and sell. This memo is intended to provide some justification for thresholds we 

recommended. We also wish to extend our support for the provision within section 

1.2.2 of the draft NPDES general permit that EPA is now considering that exempts 

entities meeting the definition of small business enterprises, as defined by the U.S. 

Small Business Administration in 13 CRF 121.201, and including commercial ("forhire") pesticide applicators that exceed the small business threshold described 

above. We urge EPA to clarify this exemption from NOI submissions. 

1. Mosquito control: Last November we recommended 250 water-acres/1000 

terrestrial-acres for larvaecides/adulticides, respectively, based on our 

conversations with some industry representatives. We believe that typical 

retirement communities, golf courses, housing developments, parks or 

recreational areas making seasonal larvaecide or adulticide treatments would 

likely not exceed such NOI thresholds. However, state, county and municipal 

mosquito-control districts will likely far exceed those thresholds. Across all 

treatments, the average daily aerial mosquito application is 1,624 acres,1

although many mosquito control districts may treat over 10,000 acres for adult 

mosquitoes in a single day. Even the smallest mosquito abatement programs 

encompassing a few square miles will likely exceed the terrestrial adulticide 

 

1 National Association of Aerial Applicators. 2004. National Use Survey, p. 24 
thresholds EPA is now considering in a given year, depending on rainfall. A 

large district such as Collier County, FL, annually logs upwards of 2 million

adulticide-treatment acres and 4,000 acres treated with larvaecides. Clearly all

mosquito control districts, large and small, would vastly exceed such thresholds. 

Unfortunately, many of the smaller 1192 municipal/county programs with 

limited resources will likely cease operations if subject to the costs and 

administrative burdens of NOI requirements, leaving constituents without 

protection from mosquito-borne diseases in addition to the loss of on-site vector 

control capacity for disaster relief operations.2 This could be partially obviated 

by increasing the NOI threshold to our recommended 250 water-acres/1000 

terrestrial acres treated per year. However, if EPA wants to differentiate 

between large and small mosquito control entities, larger annual NOI thresholds 

and IPM requirements that are tiered to the size of the entity should be 

considered. 

We are also concerned that our recommended thresholds would have an 

adverse impact on the for-hire aerial applicators contracted by decision makers 

to apply the mosquitocide, and urge EPA to agree to our recommendation that 

for-hire applicators not be expected to submit NOIs. We believe such for-hire 

applicators could be incorporated by reference in the NOIs of decision makers 

hiring them, and would be required to comply with the terms of the general 

permit and the FIFRA label. Unless such a provision is accepted, a one-man 

company with a single aircraft may treat more acres in one day than the 

thresholds we recommended – and would be expected to submit an NOI and 

complete the IPM and numerous other requirements that accompany the NOI. 

Such a one-man, single-aircraft applicator may treat 30,000 to more than 

100,000 acres annually for a wide range of clients,3 and yet would rarely have 

the advanced knowledge for an NOI of treatment targets or access to data on the 

jurisdictional waters they may encounter. Twenty-nine percent (29%) of the 

aerial application industry is made up of singe-aircraft organizations, where the 

pilot often must maintain his aircraft, mix and load a given client’s pesticides, 

and operate the aircraft to make the pesticide application. Returning from the 

application, the pilot is likely to spend the remainder of the day billing, 

recordkeeping, and meeting various flight requirements for the next day’s work. 

We believe such for-hire applicators would likely lack the technical expertise and 

find unsustainable the time and costs associated with the many compliance 

reports and IPM requirements that accompany NOI submission. 

2. Aquatic weed and algae treatments to waters of the US: In November, 2009, we 

recommended NOI thresholds for pesticide treatments by decision-making 

entities of 250 water-acres annually; we didn’t distinguish an annual treatment 

threshold recommendation for linear miles of natural streams or rivers. These 

 

2 Joseph Conlon, American Mosquito Control Association, personal communication 

3 Andrew Moore, National Agricultural Aviation Association, personal communication 
recommendations were based on the assumption that the thresholds would be 

applied to decision-making entities, such as state water management districts, 

municipalities, and perhaps lakefront homeowner communities. As before, we 

are concerned that our recommended NOI threshold not be applied to for-hire 

applicators, for RISE estimates that a small aquatic weed control company could 

exceed our annual 250 water-acre threshold recommendation within just a few 

days.4 Such for-hire applicators would likely lack the technical expertise and 

find unsustainable the time and costs associated with the many compliance 

reports and IPM requirements that accompany NOI submission. We believe such 

for-hire applicators could be incorporated by reference in the NOIs of decision 

makers hiring them, and would be required to comply with the terms of the 

general permit and the FIFRA label. 

3. Aquatic weed and algae control in man-made water conveyances: Conditions 

affecting aquatic weed and algae control in man-made water conveyances vary 

widely across the country, from California to Florida, and that thousands of 

miles of drainage ditches and water conveyances in the US must be maintained 

to allow proper water flow. Water passage through these for irrigation and 

sanitation/drinking water is maintained by a wide range of decision-making 

entities of various sizes, including communities, water districts, reclamation 

districts and state agencies. These vary widely in size across the country. Even 

within California the variation is significant. For example, the City of Antioch, 

CA maintains canals totaling 20 linear miles and serves a water district of 

merely 28 acres.5 Similarly, Potter Valley, CA, and Maine Prairie, CA, maintain 

canals of 18 and 54 linear miles, respectively. On the other hand, South Sutter 

Water District, CA, maintains 146 linear miles of canal, serving a water district 

of 57,000 acres and Glenn Colusa, CA, maintains 1,065 linear miles of canal, 

serving 175,000 acres. In November, 2009, we recommended NOI thresholds for 

pesticide treatments by decision-making entities for treatment to control aquatic 

weeds and algae in canals, drainage ditches and other water conveyances might 

be in aggregate 100 linear miles, including water treatment and, where 

necessary, both sides of the canals. However, we urge EPA to contact 

representatives of organizations that make such treatments to verify NOI 

thresholds that would be most appropriate for their industries. 

4. Area-wide Pest Control – Rights of Way: For treatment to control of brush and 

weeds along land-based rights-of-way (pipelines, power lines, roads, railroads, 

etc.) that may encounter adjacent ditches, stormwater culverts or other potential 

jurisdictional waters in the process, we said in November a reasonable annual 

NOI threshold for decision-making entities might be in aggregate 100 linear 

miles of right-of-way treatment. We believe this threshold would likely exclude 

 

4 Jim Skillen, Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE), personal communication 

5 Michael Blankinship, Blankinship & Associates, Inc., Agricultural & Environmental Science & 

Engineering, http://www.h2osci.com/aboutus.html, personal communication 
small communities’ management of their rights of way for urban areas, 

roadsides, parks, biking trails, or other recreational or service areas, but not 

exclude the many federal, state, county or municipal agencies that maintain 

roadways, or public electric- or gas-pipeline utilities that maintain rights of way, 

or railroads. A 100 linear mile threshold would still include a very large 

percentage of rights of way maintenance, for according to the National 

Association of Counties, there are 2,987,371 miles of rural roads and 1,029,363 

miles of urban roads, which are generally maintained by the 3,141 counties in 

the US. According to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) there are 

140,490 miles of Class 1 railroads in the US operated by 7 companies. According 

to the DOT there are 119,093 miles of rural interstate and 41,924 miles of urban 

interstate in the US, generally maintained by state highway departments. 

According to the US Department of Energy there are 305,000 miles of interstate 

and intrastate pipelines for natural gas and another 200,000 miles of oil 

pipelines in the US. According FEMA there are 186,411 miles of high power 

transmission lines in the US owned and operated by 500 companies. Our 

recommended 100 mile annual NOI threshold should help differentiate between 

small communities or private landowners, and the major managers of rights of 

way in the US; however we urge EPA to contact representatives of these 

organizations to verify NOI thresholds that would most appropriately suit their 

circumstances. 

5. Area-wide Pest Control – Forests: In November, 2009, we stated that, for insect 

pest control in forest canopies treated by aircraft below which jurisdictional 

waters may be present, a reasonable annual threshold for NOI submission by 

decision makers (e.g., Weyerhaeuser, Plum Creek, US Forest Service, state 

forest managers) might be in aggregate 5,000 acres of treated forest. We did not 

make a recommendation for an annual NOI threshold for herbicide applications 

required for reforestation, since we were unaware of the industry’s practices. We 

recognize that forest owners and managers only treat a small portion of their 

forests in any given year, but we are unaware of those statistics. We urge EPA to 

contact representatives of these organizations to determine what NOI thresholds 

would be most appropriate for their industry. 

6. Area-wide Pest Control – Farms, Ranches and Pastures: We have not previously 

made a recommendation for area-wide pest control on terrestrial areas such as 

farms, ranches or pastures. It is our belief that the vast majority of terrestrial 

pesticide applications to farmland or ranchland is not at all subject to the Clean 

Water Act. However, in the months since our November recommendations, we 

have been made aware by EPA of agriculture’s potential legal vulnerability if 

routine pest control applications enter ditches or any of the other conveyances or 

jurisdictional “waters” that can be encountered on agricultural lands. There are 
more than 442 million acres of farmland in the US6, most of which is treated one 

or more times annually with pesticides for weed, insect and/or disease control in 

the production of food, feed and fiber. Also receiving occasional pesticide 

treatments are 587 million acres of pasture, grassland and rangeland. To the 

extent that such terrestrial pesticide applications could be subject to the Clean 

Water Act, and EPA expects to cover such contingencies with its pesticide 

NPDES general permit, we believe that reasonable NOI thresholds would be 100 

linear miles annually of ditches or other conveyances or 250 water-acres for 

waters of the US – applied only to those portions of a given field or boundary 

where conveyances or jurisdictional waters might be encountered. EPA should 

not consider a ‘treated acre’ NOI threshold based on cropland treated, for unlike 

forest canopy applications of pesticides, on-farm pesticide applications (either by 

professionals or by farmers) can visually avoid conveyances and jurisdictional 

waters because of their awareness of the farm fields, proper caution, and with 

the help of visual in-field markers and precision-application technologies 

incorporated into modern pesticide application equipment and methods. 

 

Thank you for allowing us to contribute the points on the NOI threshold question. 

It is but one of the many issues in the scope of NPDES general permit program 

development for aquatic pesticide applications. We look forward to contributing our 

thoughts on other aspects of this issue. 

Sincerely, 

Douglas T. Nelson 

General Counsel and Secretary 

 

6 Lubowski RN, Vesterby M, Bucholtz S. Baez A, Roberts MJ. 2002. Major Uses of Land in the 

United States USDA, Economic Research Service. 

http://cta.ornl.gov/bedb/introduction/Major_Uses_of_Land_in_the_United_States.xls