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 One
piece of legislation that many lawn service providers and grounds mangers
aren’t familiar with is the Food
Quality Protection Act, or FQPA. Passed in 1996, it mandated that
the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) review 9,700 environmental tolerances (which the EPA
defines as the maximum amounts of chemicals allowed to remain in or on
foods) of 600 pesticides by 2006. In establishing these tolerances, the
law requires the agency to consider all uses of the chemicals, including
turf uses, when establishing a tolerance. If the combined uses for a pesticide
exceed the established maximum levels, the EPA has the right to remove
the chemicals from the market.
The process is costly for the companies who must defend the chemicals
when they come up for review. The expense forces hard decisions about
which chemicals will stay in the market and which will go.
The companies say the input of the Green Industry is vital in making
those decisions. Many lawn care or ground pros don’t take the time
to get involved, however, either because of time constraints or the assumption
that others, like the PLCAA
or their local chapters, will fight the legislative battles for them.
But the Green Industry and its many organizations should be intimately
involved in the process because important chemical tools could disappear
in the post-FQPA era. And as one successful intervention by a local golf
course superintendents association in Florida proves, it can make a difference.
What the heck is the FQPA?
Under the FQPA, the EPA’s charge was to assess the risks of all
pesticides in all uses, combining agricultural, turf and landscape ornamental
uses into one evaluation called a “risk cup.” If the aggregate
risks cause the “cup” to overflow, the EPA has one of three
options:
- eliminate uses in certain markets;
- mitigate risks by mandating certain safety precautions; or
- prevent the manufacturer from adding new uses to the label.
What this means for the Green Industry is that manufacturers are often
faced with the unenviable choice of eliminating certain uses for active
ingredients, many of which have migrated from the agricultural market
into the turf market. When the EPA evaluates a chemical, it often asks
manufacturers to determine what the essential uses are so it can eliminate
nonessential uses, thus lowering the overall risk. Turf/ornamental (T&O)
uses are often a target for elimination because it’s a smaller market
than agriculture.
“Clearly the non-agricultural uses more closely mimic the minor
agricultural use category,” says Joe Conti, registration director
for Bayer
Environmental Sciences. “When companies go into the EPA with
a new or existing active ingredient and are trying to maximize their development
and production capabilities, turf uses become more difficult to defend
because they have greater exposure and risk, and represent a much smaller
market segment.”
The Green Industry has already seen the EPA change the turf labels on
several standby chemicals, including Betasan, Daconil, Dursban and Dylox.
Manufacturers voluntarily cancelled the registrations of Turcam and Oftanol
because the reregistration hurdles became too large. The FQPA has already
had an effect on how the industry does business.
The cost factor
Most chemical companies say it’s not the direct monetary costs
that have the greatest effect on decisions about whether to reregister
a product. Far more difficult for companies to stomach are the hidden
costs associated with re-registration, including manpower and time issues
to file the new EPA paperwork.
“There are consequences to these type of enactments that are difficult
to measure, especially when the EPA asks you to take a product off the
market,” says LESCO’s
senior product manager Steve Jedrzejek, who experienced an EPA phase out
with Dursban. “It’s certainly a big distraction from normal
business. It’s also a drain on time and dollar resources to meet
those kinds of demands.”
Jedrezejek also worries the EPA doesn’t have enough regulators
to speed up the process enough to meet its final 2006 deadline.
“From the feedback we’ve received, the agency is under-resourced,
overwhelmed and behind schedule,” Jedrzejek says. Adds colleague
Gloria Sieloff, LESCO’s director of regulatory affairs: “When
people retire, [the EPA is] not allowed to replace them. It’s on
a hiring freeze, and a simple label amendment — on a fast-track schedule
— takes 90 days.” (Editor's Note: The EPA says there’s
no hiring freeze at the agency; see "A Q&A With the EPA.")
The translation: Defending chemicals is difficult and expensive, and
sometimes it’s easier for companies to restrict a chemical’s
use than fight for its re-registration. That’s where the industry’s
voice can come in. A specific case in Florida illustrates how.
Ways to get involved
In March 2002, Bayer Environmental Sciences asked the EPA to cancel
all its uses of fenamiphos, the active ingredient in Nemacur, a nematicide
used mostly on golf courses in Florida and a few other southern states.
Bayer asked for the cancellation because the company determined it was
becoming too expensive to defend to regulators. The final deadline on
this elimination was slated for May 31, 2005. With so few effective nematicides
on the market, the decision to eliminate Nemacur would have devastated
southern superintendents’ attempts to defeat this turf-destroying
pest.
So the Florida
Golf Course Superintendents Association entered the fray, mounting
a letter-writing campaign to both Bayer and the EPA, and argued passionately
that the superintendents needed the chemical’s life to be extended,
at least until other companies could produce alternatives. The campaign
worked. In a final agreement signed in October, the deadline for Nemacur’s
eventual phase out was extended until 2007 (with some uses around water
and in certain soil types still slated for elimination in 2005). Bayer
officials credited the agreement to the outcry from superintendents.
Even with proven success stories like this, the Green Industry isn’t
nearly as vocal as it needs to be, says Dick Collier, director of regulatory
science for Griffin
LLC.
Joe DiPaola, golf market manager for Syngenta
Professional Products, acknowledges that this attitude reflects a
larger societal one. Even so, he says the industry needs to keep the FQPA
on its radar screens and keep in touch with legislators on these issues
because of the risks of losing valuable pesticide tools. “It’s
easy enough to lose chemicals in this environment,” he says.
— The author is managing editor of Golfdom
magazine. He can be contacted at fandorka@advanstar.com
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