The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture has called on the Environmental Protection Agency to answer critics before forging ahead with new herbicide regulations.

States were not involved in drafting the EPA’s “herbicide strategy,” but would be responsible for carrying it out. The strategy is “unreasonably complex” and enforcing it is “inconceivable,” according to the association.

In comments to the EPA, the states joined farm groups, chemical makers, and weed and crop scientists concerned about the herbicide strategy and other initiatives stemming from the pesticide “megasuit.”

Pointed criticisms

NASDA public policy manager Josie Montoney-Crawford said the EPA herbicide strategy has provoked pointed criticisms and suggestions for improvement that shouldn’t evaporate “into nothingness.”

“I think right now we need more communication from the agency,” she said.

In a court settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticide Action Network, EPA has pledged to finalize the herbicide strategy by May 30 and respond to comments then.

The settlement binds the EPA to timelines, but the agency should respond to comments before then, Montoney-Crawford said. “We’ve got a lot of concerns about what this will look like,” she said.

The EPA plans to publish an updated herbicide strategy and respond to comments next spring, an EPA spokesman said in an email.

The megasuit settlement, finalized in September in U.S. District Court for Northern California, commits the EPA to a series of “strategies” to regulate herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and rodenticides.

The EPA also committed to the “vulnerable species pilot project” to test pesticide restrictions on more than 100 million acres in parts of 29 states.

The herbicide strategy restrictions would not be as severe, but critics said they would still harm the battle against weeds and invasive plants.

Before applying herbicides, farmers would have to look at an EPA website, Bulletins Live! Two, and make sure they’re scoring enough “mitigation” points.

The restrictions would be too lengthy to print on product labels, according to the EPA. “I think that’s telling in how complex this plan is,” Montoney-Crawford said.

No internet

Many farms do not have good internet service and the EPA’s “mitigation” measures don’t recognize all the ways farmers already keep pesticides from drifting or eroding off-target, according to critics.

The EPA defends the herbicide strategy and vulnerable species pilot project as preemptive strikes to keep judges from summarily banning pesticide products to protect threatened and endangered species.

The EPA pleads that scientific and economic analyses required by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act take too long. The strategies will provide a short-cut to regulating pesticides.