A plan to deal with Clean Water Act permits for spraying

Farm and Ranch March 24, 2010 The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose a rule in April or May on the application of crop protection chemicals on, over, or near water. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent refusal to review a lower court ruling means Clean Water Act permitting can be imposed on chemical applications.

Idaho farmer Eric Hasselstrom is the new chairman of the National Association of Wheat Growers Environment and Renewable Resources Committee. He explains how NAWG is addressing this issue.

Hasselstrom: “What we are looking to do is instead of having to buy one for every field or every application, because some of these are timely applications that we may not have time to get those, is to get a permit for all applications. Maybe tie it to your private applicators license that you already have to take classes on for the whole year instead of a day-by-day or field-by-field basis, because it won‘t work for agriculture.”

Hasselstrom says the EPA is open to suggestions.

Hasselstrom: “Because they can see this as a huge workload too and they are not quite sure how they want to handle this. They have been looking at some proposals and we are just now putting our input in on what we think will work for agriculture.”

The EPA is also focusing on spray drift but Hasselstrom says his committee didn’t have time to get an update on that at its meeting at Commodity Classic, where it received a report on a study on climate change legislation.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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