EPA On The Hotseat

EPA on the Hotseat. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. The Obama EPA has yet to finalize a Bush Administration exemption for dairy producers to an oil spill mitigation program that treats milk as a non-petroleum oil. Without the federal exemption - dairy producers and processors would be treated the same way as oil companies - and forced to come up with spill prevention plans. But Jamie Jonker with the National Milk Producers Federation argues milk - unlike petroleum - isn't a pollutant. JONKER: This is really just kind of an unfortunate circumstance where animal fats were defined in the original regulation and that means that they have an opportunity to regulate bulk milk storage. Speaking of the EPA. They are proposing a new permit requirement that it says would decrease the amount of pesticides discharged to our nation's waters and protect human health and the environment. According to EPA - the new permit would not cover terrestrial application to control pests on agricultural crops or forest floors. EPA estimates that the pesticide general permit will affect approximately 35-thousand pesticide applicators nationally that perform approximately half a million pesticide applications annually. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.