Northwest Water Issues. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Washington State Department of Ag Director, Dan Newhouse has been having conversations with the industry about the impacts to agriculture of the restrictions on the use of several pesticides near salmon-bearing waters not only under the initial opinions involving salmon, but the current threat of broader litigation that may involve hundreds of other species and impact farmers across the country.

NEWHOUSE: We have put together a white paper that in great detail and I think fairly easy to understand terms describe the situation and some of the potential remedies to the situation to allow the full implementation of the Endangered Species Act but still continue to give agriculture an opportunity to be able to exist in conjunction.

The feeling is that there was undue pressure put on the EPA for a ruling that neglected to include the latest and best possible information to make that ruling.

NEWHOUSE: They were certainly under the gun, under a lot of pressure through this court order to get this consultation completed. We feel that there was data available that was not considered or should have been considered more strongly. We have about 6 or 7 years of monitoring data of what water or in streams in the State of Washington that show very clearly that there is a limited amount of impact by pesticides and chemicals in these water bodies and so that the impacts to the listed species is really quite small if any.

The way the ruling reads is that these no-spray buffers include up to 1000 feet of farmland near all conveyances of water, including ditches of any size and seasonal streams and that would prevent the use of affected pesticides on up to 75 percent of the state’s existing farmland.

NEWHOUSE: And then another thing just as important is that the economic impacts of the actions taken were not taken into consideration and so there’s several things that we think need to be revisited; should have considered the first time through and we’re hoping that will be the outcome.

In addition this decision may very well soon spread outside the northwest and so Newhouse is taking this message to the other states as well.

NEWHOUSE: Greg, up until this point it’s just like I said a very regionalized northwest – I guess California, Oregon and Washington for the most part. It hasn’t risen to the level of attention even in a lot of areas in the country. So we are hoping to be able to raise that attention level.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

http://agr.wa.gov/pestfert/natresources/docs/WSDAESARec.pdf