[env-trinity] North County Times 5/17/10

[Byron Leydecker]

EPA will limit pesticides near salmon streams

North County Times-5/17/10 

By Jeff Barnard

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it will impose
restrictions on spraying three agricultural pesticides to keep them out of
salmon streams after manufacturers refused to adopt the limits voluntarily.

 

EPA will develop new rules for applying the chemicals diazinon, malathion
and chlorpyrifos that will include no-spray zones along streams and
restrictions on spraying depending on weather conditions, EPA spokesman Dale
Kemery said in an e-mail. There will also be requirements to report dead
fish.

 

Even at very low levels, the chemicals have been found by federal biologists
to interfere with salmon's sense of smell, making it harder for them to find
food, avoid predators and return to native waters to spawn.

 

The EPA action stems from a lawsuit filed by anti-pesticide groups in 2001.

 

Manufacturers Dow AgroSciences, Makhteshim Agan of North America, Cheminova
and Gharda Chemicals Ltd. notified EPA on Friday that they would not
voluntarily adopt the restrictions, said Dow AgroSciences spokesman Garry
Hamlin.

 

In a letter to the EPA, a lawyer for Dow AgroSciencies and Makhteshim Agan
said the companies feel there is no scientific evidence the pesticides are
killing, harming or jeopardizing the survival of salmon, or harming critical
habitat, and that the NOAA Fisheries analysis was deficient.

 

They also objected to EPA's handling of the case.

 

The EPA decision comes a year and a half after NOAA Fisheries Service found
the pesticides threaten the survival of 27 species of salmon and steelhead
that are protected by the Endangered Species Act in the West.

 

"We are encouraged that they are finally getting serious about implementing
these protections and hope that the agency takes the most immediate and
aggressive action available to it to ensure that pesticides are removed from
Northwest salmon waters," said Steve Machuda, an attorney for Earthjustice
in Seattle, the public-interest law firm that represented the anti-pesticide
groups.

 

Meanwhile, EPA notified NOAA Fisheries that it is going ahead with
implementing restrictions on the next set of pesticides found to harm
salmon: carbaryl, carbofuran and methomyl.

 

 

Byron Leydecker, JcT

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 land/fax (call first to fax)

415 519 4810 mobile

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 <mailto:bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org> bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org
(secondary)

 <http://fotr.org/> http://www.fotr.org 

 

 

 

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