Monday, December 26th 2016
A farmworker safety rule scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1 needs to be delayed a year because EPA has not told states how to implement it, the American Farm Bureau Federation and National Association of State Departments of Agriculture said today. In a petition filed with the agency, AFBF and NASDA claim EPA violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) by failing to deliver “enforcement guidance, educational materials, and training resources necessary to effectively implement the rule changes and assist the regulated community with compliance activities.” They asked the agency to push the effective date of the new standards from Jan. 1, 2017, to Jan. 1, 2018. One specific sticking point is the “designated representative” provision in the November 2015 Worker Protection Standard (WPS) rule. That provision would allow farmworkers to choose a person - a member of a nonprofit group, for example - to request pesticide hazard and application information, which must be accessible to workers or handlers of pesticides. Farm groups have been critical of the provision. The petition says it “exceeds the scope of the WPS rule by depriving farmers of reasonable expectation of privacy for confidential business information. Moreover, it subjects farmers to potential harassment and public criticisms for lawful use of EPA-approved pesticides.” AFBF and NASDA also said that the provision did not appear in a “draft final” rule submitted to Congress in May 2015. FIFRA requires EPA to submit final regulations to the House and Senate agriculture committees at least 30 days before they are signed by the EPA administrator. EPA acknowledged, in response to questions from the House Agriculture Committee, that the draft final rule it sent to the committee did not have the designated representative provision. Another concern is the lack of clarity on requirements for application exclusion zones (AEZ's) - areas “that must be free of all persons other than appropriately trained and equipped handlers during pesticide applications,” according to an EPA Frequently Asked Questions document on the rule.