Archive for March, 2013
Final Paper on Stakeholder Input into FIFRA Registrations and Associated ESA Consultations
Mar 29th
EPA has published its final paper describing enhanced opportunities for stakeholder input during its review of pesticide registrations under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and associated consultations under the Endangered Species Act. The paper was jointly prepared by EPA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Marine Fisheries Service. and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The paper describes significant changes to EPA’s registration review process intended to facilitate ESA pesticide consultations and coordination across these Federal agencies, and calls for a greater role for USDA.
Click here to read Federal Register notice announcing availability of the final paper.
NAS/NRC Hopes to Publish FIFRA/ESA Consultations Final Report in May 2013
Mar 26th
NAS/NRC representatives have informed CRE that they now hope to publish the report in NAS/NRC’s review of Ecological Risk Assessment under FIFRA and ESA in May 2013. The NAS/NRC Review Committee intends to publish its report in final form, without allowing public comment on a draft report.
Washington Court Stays Litigation in Light of Fourth Circuit ESA Pesticides Decision
Mar 17th
Environmental NGOs have sued EPA in a Seattle, Washington federal district court claiming that EPA has not taken any steps to implement the measures recommended in NMFS’ ESA consultation biological opinions for diazinon, malathion, chlorpyrifos, carbaryl, carbofuran, and methomyl. The court has stayed this litigation pursuant to the request of the parties in their Joint Status Report, which stated:
SAB Critically Reviews EPA’s Comptox
Mar 8th
EPA’s Science Advisory Board met on March 7-8, 2013, to review several issues including EPA “Risk Assessments—Use of Computational Toxicology.” EPA hopes to use CompTox in several contexts, including the Agency’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. Given its proposed EDSP use, and the EPA Science Advisory Panel’s continuing review of CompTox, SAB Member Dr. Elaine Faustman pointed out that “[t]he review highlights in several contexts the significance of the early use of the CompTox data for screening dispersants in the Gulf however it is silent of the very large exercise of screening for endocrine disruption that is occurring as a part of the EPA endocrine screening program. Shouldn’t the review applaud EPA’s approach to emphasize the importance of such evaluations of Comp Tox results for current EPA needs?”