WENATCHEE WORLD

January 9, 2006

Ag director - Proposed spray rule 'unworkable'

By Dan Wheat, World staff writer

WENATCHEE - A proposed rule requiring farmers to notify schools, nursing homes, hospitals and day-care centers next to them two days before spraying toxic pesticides was "too unworkable," says the director of the state agency who withdrew the proposal on Dec. 30.

And Valoria Loveland, director of the state Department of Agriculture, told The Wenatchee World last week that she may or may not propose a pilot program of the same proposed rule.

"I don't know that there will be one. It's a potential, not a done deal. I will hear more from people and if I can't figure out how and have the support and resources, it's not something we will do," Loveland said.

Where, when and how long a pilot would take place are questions Loveland said she would ask her pesticide advisory board and the Legislature to help answer if she believes there is support.

The proposed rule didn't go far enough in the eyes of environmental and farmworker advocates and was unnecessary and cumbersome, at best, in the eyes of growers.

Loveland said that lack of consensus, after three years of meetings, was one reason she decided to drop the proposed rule.

Another, she said, was just sheer unworkability - too many unanswered questions - like when did the two-day notice start and what were growers to do if they were interrupted by wind or weather?

Growers sometimes have to act fast to combat pests and waiting two days can be too late, said Loveland, a former Democratic state senator from Pasco with a family background in agriculture.

Kirk Mayer, manager of the 2,100-member Washington Growers Clearing House Association in Wenatchee, made the same point in saying that Loveland made the right decision.

"Growers need to target their applications for when pests are most vulnerable to minimize the amount of material (pesticide) they use," he said. "Such long notice can affect doing it in a timely manner. They can have narrow windows of opportunity."

There also wasn't enough interest or support from schools, nursing homes, hospitals and day-care centers, Loveland said.

Despite attempts to gain comments from those organizations, there was little and a departmental phone survey of 58 school principals in Wenatchee and Yakima produced no consensus, she said.

And Loveland said she was concerned that the schools, nursing homes, hospitals and day-care centers would be liable if not required to do anything once they were notified.

Carol Dansereau, director of the Farm Worker Pesticide Project in Seattle, said trying to minimize liability instead of pesticide risk to children "shows a clear lack of leadership."

She noted the department's Web site lists things schools can do such as keeping children inside.

But Loveland said those are guidelines, not requirements, and therefore do not solve the liability issue.

The proposal was drafted by department personnel aided by an advisory group that included Mayer and farmworker groups like Dansereau's. Loveland said they came up with an "unworkable rule" because both sides gave only inches and couldn't agree.

Loveland said she was not trying to help Gov. Christine Gregoire politically in Eastern Washington by making the decision but did talk to Gregoire about it and told her she didn't have a good answer.

Asked if she obtained the governor's buy-off before making the decision, Loveland said, "Not really."

But Dansereau said the decision certainly hurts the governor among those concerned about public health.

Dansereau called the decision "an outrage," and "a slap in the face" to those who worked for years in good faith to get it adopted.

It was only a baby step, she said, toward notification to all people next to pesticide applications, air monitoring of applications, no-spray zones around unprotected workers and children, and deadlines for phasing in alternatives that shift growers away from toxic pesticides.

Loveland said most of those items would take legislative action.

Mayer said the tree fruit industry already is shifting to nontoxic pesticides and increasing organic production. He noted the toxic pesticides have requirements for safe use.

Dansereau said 262 of the 290 written comments the department received favored the rule, but Loveland said that isn't accurate. She didn't have an accurate breakdown readily available but said it was closer to 50-50.

Loveland said the department is protecting the public with existing laws and programs that prohibit spray drift.

"Department management has severely undercut inspectors' abilities to enforce drift regulations over the past two years," Dansereau said, "so it's amazing that they now raise enforcement as a solution."