The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposes testing new pesticide rules on more than 100 million acres across 29 states, an effort so large even the USDA describes the consequences for agriculture as “staggering.”

Under the proposed rules, instead of weighing the benefits and risks a pesticide would have on 27 threatened and endangered species, the EPA will assume any conventional crop-protection product will hurt them all.

From that assumption comes the EPA’s “Vulnerable Species Pilot Project.” The EPA has picked species, including the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly in Oregon and Washington, that purportedly have “small ranges” and are particularly vulnerable to pesticides.

The modestly titled program will apply to an area the size of California. Farmers will have to get permission to spray a pesticide from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service three months before an application.

The pilot will impact 4.8 million acres in Western Oregon and Western Washington, as well as agriculture in California, Wyoming, the Midwest, the Great Lakes, the East and the South.

University of Illinois weed scientist Aaron Hager said he has explained the plan to farmers and pesticide applicators. “You get sort of a deer-in-the-headlights look,” he said.

Under the pilot project, protection of Mead’s milkweed, a prairie plant, alone will change pesticide regulations on 9.9 million acres in six Midwest states. Protecting the Rusty patched bumble bee will affect 3.1 million acres in 10 states.

Attwater’s prairie chicken will rework pesticide regulations on 723,000 acres in Texas. The Buena Vista Lake ornate shrew in California changes rules on 3.3 million acres, two-thirds of it cropland.

“I don’t think there’s a high level of awareness about this in the sectors of agriculture that should be aware of it,” Hager said. “I think there’s some level of disbelief.”

EPA in a hurry

The EPA announced the vulnerable species pilot in June to mark “pollinator week,” though most of the 27 species aren’t pollinators. The EPA released a 152-page plan and gave farmers, applicators, scientists, states and pesticide companies 45 days to digest it and comment.

Groups asked for more time, complaining the proposal was hard to fathom.

The EPA rejected extending the comment period and downplayed the pilot’s significance. The EPA didn’t mention it was simultaneously wrapping up the pesticide “megasuit” that commits it to the vulnerable species pilot.

Previous stories on EPA’s pesticide plan

• EPA’s controversial pesticide plan awaits court OK
• Court approves EPA pilot pesticide program, part of ‘megasuit’
• Farm groups need time to digest EPA’s ‘herbicide strategy’
• USDA sounds alarm over EPA’s pesticide plan
• Washington potato industry sees EPA pesticide plan as threat
• States say EPA pesticide plan poisonous to compliance programs
• Washington slams EPA pesticide pilot project
• Worried states hurry to comment on EPA pesticide controls
• Endangered butterfly spurs strict pesticide limits in OR, WA
• Editorial: Does EPA pilot program portend a larger plan?
• Editorial: EPA tries ‘sue and settle’ power grab
• Editorial: Plaintiffs’ agenda now the law of the land
• Editorial: Ag production is at risk, but where’s the news coverage?

Filed in 2011, the lawsuit alleged EPA was failing to consider how EPA-registered pesticides affect federally protected species.

The EPA initially fought the lawsuit, but finally agreed that it was overwhelmed by the scientific demands of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.

FIFRA requires the EPA to analyze the risks and benefits of a chemical. The EPA has now concluded it is less time-consuming to regulate pesticides through the priorities of another federal law, the Endangered Species Act.

The megasuit settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticide Action Network lists the vulnerable species pilot as one step the agency will take to comply with the ESA. U.S. District Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero in San Francisco approved the settlement in September.

The EPA called the settlement and pilot project a “win” for farmers because it will stop judges from banning chemicals. But judging by the comments the EPA received, farm groups and others are not grateful.

“This pilot project could potentially be the most transformative and disruptive pesticide policy since the EPA was established,” the Mississippi Farm Bureau stated.

The practical effect, according to the California Fresh Fruit Association, “would be the cessation of agricultural production in the agricultural bread basket of California.”

The Nebraska Farm Bureau called the plan “unreasonable, unfounded and unclear.” The Arkansas Farm Bureau asserted it was a “de facto ban” on pesticides.

Between Mead’s milkweed, American burying beetles and Ozark cavefish, Kansas farmers in 26 counties will need permission from Fish and Wildlife to spray pesticides. The Kansas Department of Agriculture said that wasn’t feasible because pests don’t give three months of advance notice.

The Weed Society of America dryly suggested to the EPA, “It would be very helpful … to have a description of the benefits and impacts of your proposal.”

Since the pilot project applies to all outdoor, non-residential uses of pesticides, groups had complaints unrelated to agriculture.

Oregon State University commented the pilot will hamper maintaining shrub beds and athletic fields. “Weed-free fields are important for athlete safety,” the school told the EPA.

The USDA identified Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin as the states most affected.

The “pesticide-use limitation area” for the Taylor’s checkspot butterfly includes the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the Skagit Valley in Washington. “Farming may no longer be viable” in those areas, according to the USDA.

The Washington State Department of Agriculture asked the EPA to cancel or delay the project. But it’s too late. The EPA legally bound itself to the pilot project when it settled the megasuit.

The EPA could alter the details, but the settlement commits the EPA to finishing “public outreach” this year and to consider expanding the pilot to other species next year.

An EPA spokesman said in an email that the agency is “evaluating public comments on the proposal and determining how to incorporate the public feedback.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service has been publicly silent on the EPA’s proposal to make it a pesticide regulator and responsible for reviewing thousands of requests to spray.

“We understand that EPA has received a number of comments and plans to revise the draft proposal,” USFWS said in a statement.

Poster species

In a “white paper” on the proposal, the EPA described the pilot this way:

“EPA acknowledges that this is a broad approach with many strict mitigations, but it is important to note that this pilot project is applied to a relatively small area and is intended to protect the most vulnerable species.”

Critics saw it as an overreach and the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly in Oregon and Washington state as the poster species.

For one thing, the federal recovery plan for the species does not list pesticides as a threat to the butterfly’s survival. The butterfly likes to bask in open spaces, and the loss of those areas imperils it, according to USFWS.

In fact, herbicides benefit the butterfly by keeping invasive plants from crowding out native habitat, according to USFWS.

The butterfly occupies two meadows in the Willamette Valley, both in Benton County. USFWS designated 20 acres in Oregon as “critical habitat” for the butterfly’s recovery.

In contrast, the EPA pilot project has proposed restrictions on 1.15 million acres — 730,000 acres of it farmland — in parts of Benton, Lane, Lincoln, Linn and Polk counties, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

The USDA estimates that 4.3% of Oregon’s cropland would be in the butterfly’s avoidance zone, the highest percentage in the country. ODA points out the difference between 20 acres and 1.15 million acres is more than 5 million percent.

Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-Deremer, a Republican who represents part of the Willamette Valley and is on the House Agriculture Committee, implored the EPA to reconsider the plan.

“The EPA’s proposed plan would eliminate the use of pesticides in much of the Willamette Valley,” Chavez-Deremer said in a letter to the EPA.

The other Oregon lawmaker on the House Agriculture Committee, Democrat Andrea Salinas, said in a statement to the Capital Press that the EPA’s pilot project “may be too broad.”

“I urge the EPA to listen to the concerns raised by our farmers, scientists, and academics because they are the ones who will be most affected,” she said.

The pilot project’s impact on Washington may even be greater.

While the USFWS designated 1,920 acres in Clallam, Island and Thurston counties as critical habitat for the Taylor’s checkerspot, the EPA proposes pesticide prohibitions on more than 3 million acres in 14 counties, drawing a boundary based on the butterfly’s “historic range.”

The Skagit Valley has no Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies. The closest known Taylor’s checkerspot site is on the Olympic Peninsula, according to USFWS. Between the butterfly and the Skagit Valley lies Puget Sound.

The valley produces vegetable seeds, potatoes and other crops. In comments to the EPA, the USDA devoted a section to the Skagit Valley. The USDA concluded that much of the farming there would be “impossible.”

The Center for Biological Diversity calls the pilot project a “commonsense, species-centric approach to pesticide regulations,” but agrees EPA went overboard with the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly.

The center proposes pesticide limitations on 165,650 acres, or 3% of the area proposed by EPA. The smaller area would still protect the butterfly, while reducing the “associated controversy,” according to the center.

The EPA is aware of the concerns regarding the Taylor’s checkerspot, the EPA spokesman said in an email.

“If appropriate and supported by best available information, EPA expects to reduce the size of the (pesticide use limitation area) for the Taylor’s checkerspot as well as the types of mitigations and extent of those mitigations,” he said.

Impact on ag, habitats

In explaining why the EPA was holding a short comment period, EPA pesticide regulator Jan Matusko stated the 27 species have “small ranges” and the “potential impact” on “pesticide users nationally is small.”

According to figures submitted by Bayer Crop Science, pilot-project restrictions will apply to more than 100 million acres and include 15 million cultivated acres, the size of West Virginia.

Asked to confirm Bayer’s figures, the EPA responded, “The draft proposal (pesticide-limitation areas) collectively cover a large area.”

The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture does not consider the pilot proposal to have a small impact, said Josie Montoney-Crawford, the association’s public policy manager.

State agriculture departments co-regulate pesticides with the EPA. The states are concerned they’ll be in the position of explaining and enforcing a European-style regulatory approach alien to U.S. agriculture.

The states have been talking to the EPA about their concerns, Montoney-Crawford said. “We’re waiting with bated breath to see whether they respond.”

Even if EPA scales back the project, it could retain the core idea — making USFWS pesticide co-regulators.

The EPA could go ahead with smaller patches, like the 14,486 acres it proposes to regulate in Eastern Washington to protect the White Bluffs bladderpod, a plant in the Hanford Reach National Monument.

Alternatively, University of Georgia Extension weed scientist Stanley Culpepper said the EPA should start over.

The pilot project would “potentially destroy agriculture” and “destroy the habitat of the species that they’re actually trying to protect,” Culpepper said on “War Against Weeds,” a podcast hosted by land-grant universities.

“If you don’t protect agriculture, if you don’t protect the family farm, there’s no way you protect the habitat of the species,” he said.

“I’m going to ask the cotton farmer to reach out to Fish and Wildlife and get a permit for every single pesticide that could be used on cotton because I don’t know what the challenges are going to be three months from now,” he said. “Just think about the potential challenges with that.”

Looking ahead, the EPA has a lot of species it could add to the pilot project. There are more than 1,300 threatened or endangered species.

The Center for Biological Diversity has suggested adding the Oregon silverspot butterfly and prohibiting pesticide applications on private land wherever the butterfly is found.

Hager, the University of Illinois weed scientist, said the pilot project could end up touching every sector of agriculture.

“You see the word ‘pilot’ in the project’s name, so you can probably assume that there’s more coming in the future,” he said. “Is there an end to this?”