Comments of EPA draft by Lars Baker, Jan2010

Let me preface these remarks with the statement t hat I am a lay reader of some very technical documents full of freighted meaning with which I am unfamiliar. No doubt I will get smarter at time goes by, but for now many of these i ssues may be taken care of

once I understand them better. Some of these comments may seem paranoid. I certainly do not think the EPA is some va st conspiracy with evil intent. But, as a bureaucrat myself, I understand that there is program creep and definitions that once were unambiguous are re-interpreted to allow ve ry different activity that was initially

envisioned.

1.1.1 The general definition of Ar eawide Pest Control is very br oad. It certainly includes every weed and pest district in Wyoming if t he spray at all. Fifteen acres, and from the

discussion on the Web cast the acres are cumulative for the applicator, will put every weed district under the permi t. Most commercial applicat ors will be exempt because they are not running area wide pr ograms. This definition also mentions irrigation ditches specifically.

1.1.2.4 ESA: It looks like t hey could use this NPDES permit to regulate all pesticide applications under discharge-related activiti es, depending on how that is defined. It is possible to imagine 20 years from now t hat you would have to get approval pretreatment for any pesticide use to get a finding of no adverse impact.

1.2.2 the list of folks required to do NOI cl early includes any weed district applying pesticides and all cities and towns who take on mosquitoes regardless of size. The acreage thresholds are just for the smaller commercial applicators or farmers that don’t get included under the other defin itions. The only folks that are exempt are relatively small operations. Thus, the entire pile of paperwork and reporting will be ours. A few applicators will just go out of business and find other work. For weed districts, I guess we could go back to being weed cops and write people tickets for not treating weeds and let them figure out how to get around the permit, NOI’s and record keeping. I suspect most of us will try to figure out how to still provide service. I have no way to estimate the paperwork demand at this point, but it does concern me.

2.1.2 I can’t imagine a commercial applicator not already doing this. I have no objection to this as a best management practice, but it will involve record keeping. I can see the file Daily/Weekly/Monthly/A nnual records of maintenance activities and eventually saving the data for each calibration test to be able to show that it was done correctly 5 years after the fact during an inve stigation of a contamination.2.2.+++ Integrated Pest Management. One of the great cha llenges Weed and Pest Districts have is the actual implementation of IPM. We teach it, and demonstrate it, but mostly districts just supply one aspect of IMP, pesticide application and the landowner must supply the rest of the management. These rules my improve performance by mosquito abatement districts run by muni cipal and county governments by improving the pre and post application monitoring. But thresholds are tricky. How many WNV positive mosquitoes does it take to result in disease? We tested Culex tarsalis all summer and it was not until August when the mosquito numbers were actually declining, did we actually star t getting positive results from our testing. Yet, as in the past the sentinel species for WNV is humans . Human diagnosis preceded detection in the vector population. And we tested thousands of mosquitoes every week. I am convinced the percentage of Cule x carrying WNV is a fraction of a percent. So, what is the threshold? Do you not treat until you get a positive human case? Or do you think preventively and say that every mosquito that you kill tonight is one more that cannot

bite an infected bird and become a vector to other birds and humans?

So, some of this is good, and since the BLM will be under the general permit, or will they? If in Wyoming the permit is issued by DEQ, will federal agencies be governed by it? Maybe they will be under the EPA general pe rmit? IF the permits are the same, the result should be. At any rate, with permit in hand, the BLM will be more effective in dealing with lessees to get IPM on federal lands. Municipalities will sharpen up their mosquito programs a little. But mot commercial applicators will have little influence over the IPM while at the same time be respons ible for implementation. A farmer hires the COOP to spray his grain. Others do the same . In the course of the summer they treat thousands of acres. It appears t hey come under the permit, yet have no control over the integrated management practi ce on the farm beyond t he one they contribute.

I just don’t see how this will work. How do you deal with this in the NOI? Who is responsible for the pollution? T he applicator, or the farmer w ho did not perform the best management practices? Maybe it is not that hard. Certainly, a co mmercial applicator would identify the pest and would not use an i neffective pesticide at an ineffective rate. But, he can’t do the guy’s fall plowing t hat is so important to weed management.

2.2.3 Still talking about ditch banks. To me th at means terrestrial weeds on ditch banks, not aquatic vegetation in the ditch. We ar e dealing with multiple species. They are already mapped. The law says the threshold is “0 ”. But, it sounds like we need separate species specific plans and monitoring. Fr emont County Weed and Pe st treats weeds on ditch banks about 1,100 center line miles of irrigation canals each year, some of the ditches are treated twice, once for annual w eeds and sweet clover just to improve visibility and access, then later for the desi gnated noxious weeds. In most cases we doboth sides. Some ditches are in Indian Country . Will that take a f ederal permit? State permit, or both. Early on in the discussion it said the general permit would not cover you if you had another permit or they decided you needed a separate permit. So, here a ditch, operated by the BIA that crosses pr ivately owned land. State law does not apply on the Indian land and Tribal law does not appl y on the private. Federal applies to both, so I will need either an agreement that the DEQ permit does ap ply on the reservation, or I will need a federal permit.

4.1 Is record keeping on everything you do all day long, so that you can document that you checked the calibration, checked for lea ks, etc. If you can’t document it, then it never happened.

4.2 If you don’t keep a record of your follo w up, then it never happened. Treating weeds will be a research project. I already do a lot of that and have actually published as a result, but most commercial applicator s will not go back, and even when we put an emphasis on following up, I’d guess less than 20% of our treatment sites are critically examined post treatment and only a tiny fraction of those post treatment visits generate any paperwork. This will be a big change.

4.3 I think they are talking about water monito ring here. I appreciate that this is not an initial permit requirement, but USGS can find Tordon, 2,4-D and dicamba in the Wind River near Riverton every year. The concent rations are always near t he limits of detection, but they still see it. My guess is that a required water monitoring program will increase the cost of using pesticides to the point no NPDES permits will be needed, the ultimate goal of the entire environmental effort for many years. T here are at least ten weed and pest supervisors in Wyoming who have hit the rule of 85. For the rest, they

need to start to cross train as water sampling technicians.

5.0 The Pesticide Discharge M anagement Plan: I have little concern over the idea of a management plan. Most Districts have somethi ng already in plan that will meet at least some of these issues in a general way. Bu t, if you have to answer all the questions in 5.1.2, that will take research. It appears to be species specific and that would multiply the size of the document. Hoary cress is easier to kill in late May or early June. Russian knapweed is easier to kill after July. They take different herbicides. But, I really get just

one chance. I use both herbicides as a tank mix, and at least one, maybe both species will be treated at less than optimum receptiv eness. So, I increase the herbicide above

the minimum effective rate at the optimum time for the application to ensure control. I

wonder if I will still be able to do that under the permit. It is im practical to try to make a separate application for each target species. There just too many weeds and so little

time.The PDMP is further compounded by massive land surface I am tasked with, over 6,000,000 acres. I can produce maps of all the weeds we have ever sprayed in the last ten years. That gives me an i dea of where I will spray again, but we find we infestations every year and have been trying to get everyone before they can get well established. I cannot predict where I am going to be working except in a general way. I would think that most commercial applicators are only bo oked out a few weeks ahead, and at this time of year are just hoping they will get some work. For them to develop a plan showing all the fields they intend to spray is impossible.

5.1.3 Description of control options. Here is where you list all the stuff over which you have no control, and the few things you do control. Will I need to document my analysis of every pesticide available, species by s pecies? Site by site? Season by season? That is a lot of research yet to be done. If t he data does not exist, am I responsible to generate it before I can use the pesticide? And then develop an rotation schedule and a tank mix system to reduce resistance. This is mostly about mosquitoes isn’t it? They are not really thinking about weed control on ditch banks, but they mention ditch banks as a mosquito treating location. Could it really be that they are not thinking about terrestrial weed control at all? If it only applies to mosquito abat ement, I think we are half way there, but it is not clear at all. EPS defines a pes t as a “living organism that causes harm”. That include weeds, but I don’t see terrestrial weeds in their thinking. They are looking at moss, algae, and subm erged vegetation that are controlled by a

direct introduction of a chemical into the water.

What are the “waters of the US?” In Cheyenne I heard first “navigable waters” roughly enough water to float a log, but the EPA gu y, Rise, said that has been expanded to include even temporary flood ponds if a migrat ing duck could land in it. Maybe irrigation

water is not included once diverted.

5.1.5 They finally require the documentation for all the monitoring schedules which will mean they expect to see the documentation of the monitoring in the report and will want to see that you met your scheduled documenta tion or get an explanation as to why the

schedule did not work out.

6.1 describes what will happen to you if you do not document everything. Mostly, they talk about remedial actions and plan revisions, but the fines are in there somewhere.

After all it is the EPA.

Appendix A.I Definitions

Active ingredient certainly include terrestrial herbicidesAdverse affects seems limited to aquatic species. T hat’s good and sort of suggests this is really aimed at aquatic pest control. If th at is the case, and they say flat out it does not apply to terrestrial weed control, then I will be comforted a great deal. Having to document a mosquito program will be enough.

Appendix B. I knew there would be penalties

Final analysis:

I does look like it is primarily focused on mosquito control programs and the treatment of aquatic pests, but the door is certainly left open for other activities that could result in pesticide contamination of the waters of the US. It looks like Weed and Pest programs will fall under the permit, but it is not clear which activities would be included. Fremont County Weed and Pest may not be affected dire ctly since we do not actually treat any aquatic sites, that is all done by the tribes and municipalities. Nonetheless, it will be a significant burden on relatively sma ll communities. Hudson and Shoshoni with populations under 1000 people treat well over a section of land in their adulticiding effort, but only a fraction of that could be c onsidered riparian or aquatic. And little of the aquatic is actually treated with a larvaecide. I just do not know how to read this and maybe you can get some clarification while in Dallas.

Thanks for your interest,

Lars Baker, Fremont County Weed and Pest