NC’s Ag Commissioner Pushing for Sensible Environmental Protection Act Bill in Congress

Last week, Senators Kay Hagan of NC and Mike Crapo of ID introduced a bipartisan bill to eliminate what they call unnecessary Environmental Protection Agency regulation on pesticides.

“This is an issue we have been dealing with for a long time. The bill does clarify the Clean Water Act permits that are not required for pesticide applications in or near water.
 

We are in a bit of an undoing stage right now. The pesticide law had created an effective and comprehensive regulatory web to protect the environmental and public health. This process specifically examines a pesticides potential impact on water. We know that we have sufficient regulation in place. But there was a ruling in the Court of Appeals a few years ago that allowed the EPA to enact additional regulation on pesticide use under the Clean Water Act.
 

This situation has been in litigation since the beginning. We are talking about duplicate regulation. We don’t need this other regulation and its creating more work. It’s a bad idea and we hope the bill passes.
 

Its also expensive for producers. Its an unnecessary burden. We have the right regulations in place so we don’t need more.
 

To be clear, this does not eliminate any regulations on pesticides, but it will eliminate redundant regulations that cause taxpayers money and provide no additional protection to the public or the environment.”