YOU’RE EITHER AT THE TABLE OR ON THE MENU

The more things change the more they remain the same, right? Or so the cliché goes. While I have been in the professional lawn care business for forty years, I am only about six years into my second career as an advocate for our industry. Stepping into my new role, I discovered a world of pesticide and fertilizer policy that exists largely out of view of the professional applicator community yet directly affects everything that we do.

First, there was the EPA. Much to my chagrin, we had no relationship with their Office of Pesticide Programs at all. At one of the first conferences that I attended, I recall my then-boss making a big deal out of meeting the guy who was the head of that office. Not an auspicious start for an industry that relies upon the pesticide products that the agency registers.

Then there were a multitude of organizations and associations known only by their cryptic acronyms: AAPCO, SFIREG, PPDC, AAPFCO, OPMP, EIEIO (okay, okay,

by Bob Mann, National Association of Landscape Professionals

that last one is an association of elderly farmers named McDonald…). Each of these organizations represents a cog in the wheel of how our regulatory system communicates with one another. For instance, perhaps you’ve heard of the issue of PFAS in pesticides that recently made headlines. The group known as SFIREG (that’s pronounced “sah-fy-reg”) is a working group of state and federal regulators that tackles difficult pesticide issues and has been leading the effort to unravel the PFAS gordian knot.

The odd thing about SFIREG is that the meetings are always more popular than the organizers realize, resulting in us attendees practically sitting in each other’s laps and hanging from the chandeliers just to be in the room. These groups are understandably focused upon agricultural uses of pesticides; our job is to make sure that the non-agricultural uses (lawn and landscape, mosquito and tick as well as pest control) do not get left out of the discussion.

One way we do that is by participating in a group called PPDC, which stands for Pesticide Program Dialog Commit- tee. This is an EPA forum that includes appointed members from across the entire spectrum of pesticide policy, from farmers to manufacturers and from landscapers to environmental non-profit groups. My first PPDC meeting was just after I was hired at NALP and was hugely intimidating. The meeting was held at the EPA’s office in Crystal City just steps away from Reagan Airport outside of Washington. I knew no one and no one knew me.

The subject matter being discussed was way over my head, topics I had never heard of even though I had been a professional applicator for four decades. Fortunately for me, some kindhearted people took me under their wings and introduced me to people and included me in their circle. After five years of attending and paying close attention, I was able to secure a seat on this committee last year representing the lawn and landscape industry.

That’s the funny thing, we’re a closeknit group in the lawn and landscape industry and my observation is that those in the regulatory space are every bit as close knit. That doesn’t apply to everyone, however. Our opponents are not there to make nice. They’re there to put us out of business. And now, as Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story.

There are a number of federal laws that come to bear on pesticides, the most recognizable of which is FIFRA (Gosh... so many acronyms! This one means the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act). What you may not know is that the Endangered Species Act also has a role in the regulation of pesticides. The ESA states that any action by a federal agency (in this case the EPA’s registration of a pesticide) that may jeopardize an endangered species, or their critical habitat must be evaluated by either the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for terrestrial species or the National Marine Fisheries Service for aquatic species, together referred to as The Services.

The EPA has been in trouble with Federal courts lately for their practice of conditionally registering pesticides for use without first completing the ESA assessment. In fact, only 5% of all pesticides on the market today have completed this final step. This past December the Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a stinging rebuke of EPA’s handling of their ESA responsibilities asking how much longer the court must tolerate it. You can read between the lines as well as I can on this.

In response, EPA has undertaken an ambitious plan to bring the agency into compliance by publishing two iterations of their ESA Workplan. Condensed down to its essence, the workplan seeks to significantly speed up the consultation process by internalizing much of the work that would be done by The Services ahead of time.

Further, instead of evaluating pesticide active ingredients on an individual basis, EPA will be grouping pesticides together. For instance, instead of evaluating imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam individually, the agency will group them together and evaluate their effects on non-target species (notice the change in what they’re evaluating there?) based on the fact that all of them are neonicotinoids.

While this will certainly make the process of evaluation quicker, the evaluation will lose much of its focus. We know that all three of these insecticides are vastly different in their efficacy on different insect pests and their adverse effects on pollinators.

The end result of this evaluation is to identify those endangered species and their habitat that will be adversely affect- ed and then, when possible, list mitigation measures to reduce that risk. In agricultural settings, those mitigations might be prohibiting the use of the product in a county where the endangered species is found, or the use of low drift spray nozzles, or the installation of a border around the field made up of perennial grasses that are routinely maintained (in other words, a lawn, ironically).

What concerns us at this juncture is that much of the discussion surrounds agricultural uses of pesticides. With the exception of the rodenticides used in pest control, we haven’t seen much from EPA on non-agricultural uses. They promise that they’ll be taking up the issue soon and will be reaching out to us. Let’s hope that’s the case.

What we are going to need from you is involvement. Just recently, in another state that shall remain nameless, a very adverse piece of legislation that will directly affect the way we do business in that state was introduced. Despite our warnings and outreach we never got any real response from lawn and landscape contractors. The end result is that the legislation will in all likelihood be passed into law.

Our detractors will use this victory as a weapon in other states to pass similar legislation. Our opponents only have to win once; we have to win every time. Our job is to make our customer’s landscapes beautiful; our opponent’s job is to attack us. There lies the disparity. Make sure you have time and resources set aside to engage in the political process. As the old cliché goes, you’re either at the table or on the menu. It’s your choice!

Bob Mann is the Senior Director of Technical & Regulatory Affairs for the National Association of Landscape Professionals.

A native of Duxbury, Massachusetts, Bob graduated from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture with a degree in Turf Management and from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in Agricultural Economics. Bob is, formerly the agronomist for Lawn Dawg and president of Weed & Feed Professional Services, Inc.