AES Comments on DRAFT Reporting Requirements for the PGP 

11/23/09 

 

We have reviewed the proposed PGP section on reporting. A fundamental question that 

needs to be addressed is the purpose of the annual report. It must be kept in mind that 

the pesticide applications made by a permittee over a year’s period may cover a large 

area (a state or county) and may involve hundreds or thousands of individual 

applications. Some applications may also be quite large (thousands of acres in a single 

mission – for example 120 gallons of naled (aerial adulticide) can treat 25,600 acres at 

0.06 oz/acre). Some areas may be treated multiple times during a year. The proposed 

annual report seems designed for treatments to a single or a limited number of locations. 

We suggest that the most useful information that could be collected from this reporting is 

the amount of use over the treated acreage within a geographic area such as a county or 

sub-county region. The Agency and state lead agencies can then review the information 

to identify areas with the highest or most concentrated use. Conversely, requirements 

that specific application data be reported on an annual basis will place a large, 

unnecessary reporting burden on permittees and a large resource drain on the USEPA and 

state lead agencies. Reporting individual treatment locations will require a very robust 

and expensive data base. 

Here are our specific comments/questions referenced to the Section of the DRAFT. 

9.1 Annual Report 

If you are required to submit an NOI as identified in Part 1.2.2, you must submit an annual report 

electronically to EPA that includes the following information: 

- Permittee’s name 

- NPDES permit tracking number(s) 

- Permittee’s mailing address 

- Contact person name, title, and phone number 

- For the calendar year: 

o Name(s) of products used and active ingredients of those products For each 

product, 

 Location (e.g., county, city, town village) where applied 

 Quantity applied directly to waters 

 Quantity applied over or near waters 

 Pests targeted 

o Description(s) of locations treated, including identification of any waterbodies 

to which pesticides were applied directly 

EPA strongly recommends that you submit this report electronically using the Annual Reporting 

Form provided as Appendix H. You must submit the annual report to EPA no later than February 15 of the 

following year for all pesticide activities occurring January through December 31. The appropriate 

address for the report are Identified in Part 11.0. Operators obtaining permit coverage within 30 days of 

the end of the calendar year are not required to submit an annual report for that first partial year but must 

submit annual reports thereafter. 
COMMENTS:

The EPA Registration Number should be reported. The “product name” is ambiguous 

and can lead to confusion. The EPA Registration Number will provide brand name, 

formulation, and active ingredient without requiring duplicative reporting. For FIFRA 

25(b) products the complete name of the product and active ingredient must be provided.

 

Will the permit tracking number be automatically issued upon electronic submission of 

an NOI, or will the CWA agency need to review, "approve" the NOI, and then issue the 

tracking number to the permittee? 

If the latter, will the NOI submitter have to wait for receipt of a permit tracking number 

before making applications, or can they consider themselves covered once their NOI is 

submitted? 

The requirement for “pests targeted” is superfluous. Pesticides are expensive and would 

not be applied without a need. Record keeping required as part of the BAT process will 

document the need for the pesticides applied. The individual species of pests (e.g. 

mosquitoes) may change over time, increasing the complexity of the data base required. 

The requirement for “descriptions of locations treated” is vague. Areas treated may not 

be identified, named water bodies –in fact, for mosquito control, named water bodies will 

be rarely if ever, treated. Areas that periodically flood or receive high tides will more 

often be the sites of treatment. The data base will have to be very large to accommodate 

the descriptions and locations of potentially hundreds of treatment locations. 

The term “near” needs to be clearly defined. With no guidance on what "near" is, 

reporting quantities applied near a water body will either be a very crude estimate or an 

overestimation of risk to a water body. The latter would result if the entire amount 

applied were reported as near a water body. In contrast, the former would occur if one 

considered that only a portion of a treatment may be made near a water body, while the 

rest of the application could be a greater distance away and, less likely to reach, let alone, 

impact the water body. Only the applications or the portions of an application that could 

impact a water body should be reported. We have proposed a definition of near - 

(an application within one swath width of the application equipment used. For example, 

application by a truck based ULV adulticide rig has an operational swath width of 300 

feet. Therefore a “near” water application would be within 300 feet of waters of the 

state. For an airplane, the swath width is 1000 feet, therefore “near water” is within 

1000 feet. For a hand held spray wand, the swath width can be established during 

calibration, but is typically two feet. Near water would then be within two feet.) to which 

the Agency has not responded. 
9.2 Adverse Incident Reporting 

You must immediately notify EPA and the appropriate state wildlife or natural resources agency 

and submit an incident report if you become aware or have been informed that an adverse incident has 

occurred in connection with a discharge from your pesticide application. See Part 5.3.1. You must provide 

an electronic report of the adverse incident to the appropriate EPA address listed in Part 11 and to the State 

Lead Agency for pesticide regulation (see http://npic.orst.edu/state1.htm ) within 14 days when the adverse 

effects were first observed. Contents of the written incident report must include: 

• Name of permittee, mailing address, and telephone number 

• Name, address, and telephone number of contact person 

• Date permittee became aware of the incident 

• Date of incident (if appropriate, list start and end dates) 

• Location of incident (city, county, state, waterbody name) 

• Product Name and EPA Registration Number 

• Formulation, if known 

• Evidence the label directions were not followed (e.g., yes, no, unknown) 

• A brief description of the circumstances of the incident 

• Symptoms or adverse effects 

• Magnitude of the effect (e.g. aquatic square area or total stream distance affected) 

• Pesticide application rate, intended use site (e.g., banks, above, or direct to water), and 

method of application 

• Description of the habitat and the circumstances under which the incident occurred 

• If plants were impacted, the type of plant life affected (i.e., crop, forest, orchard, home 

garden, ornamental foliage, etc) 

• If laboratory tests were performed, indicate what test(s) were performed and provide a 

summary of the test results. 

• Actions to be taken to prevent recurrence of incident. 

• All requirements listed in 8.1.4 

 

COMMENTS:

What is meant by "adverse"? Temporary and non-lethal symptoms may occur in nontarget plants after aquatic herbicide applications. Impacts to certain aquatic invertebrate 

species may occur with subsequent population rebound. It could be possible for a smallscale fish kill (due to low dissolved oxygen) to occur following an application made in 

accordance with label directions. It should also be noted that many non-pesticidal 

management techniques (mechanical harvesting for aquatic weeds, water draw downs for 

insect management) can have significant non-target effects also. 

The purpose of the incident reporting also needs to be clearly understood. The purpose 

should be to alert the regulatory agencies so that they can conduct an investigation if the 

situation warrants it. For that purpose the adverse effect report can be simpler than 

proposed here. Descriptions of habitat, types of plants affected, etc. can be simplified to 

a statement of the adverse effect observed, and the extent of the effect, which will allow 

state lead agencies to determine if investigation is warranted. 

The permit tracking number should be included.
The EPA Reg. No. for the pesticide associated with the incident should be reported.

The date of the application should be included. 

A statement as to whether the label was followed is superfluous. This will be determined 

during an investigation by the state lead agency.

Very few mosquito control applications will be to named water bodies. A geographic 

descriptor, lat/long coordinates, or GPS coordinate is more useful.

It is unlikely that laboratory tests will have been conducted. Analyses for pesticide 

residues in environmental samples routinely take weeks to months to complete. 

What are the requirements in 8.1.4?