Groups call for better assessment of pesticide risks

SEATTLE — Conservation and fisheries groups gave the government two months’ notice Monday that they plan to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unless it does a better job of gauging the risks various pesticides pose to salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

In a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt, lawyers with the environmental defense firm Earthjustice said the federal agency had failed to use the best available science when it concluded that more than three dozen pesticides either would not harm or likely would not harm threatened and endangered salmon runs.

Earthjustice, which is representing the Washington Toxics Coalition, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and other groups, cited an April draft letter from NOAA Fisheries — the federal agency in charge of restoring salmon — saying it did not support the EPA’s findings.

“Pesticides are deadly by design, and they’ll kill baby salmon after they wash off fields, orchards and lawns into salmon streams,” Earthjustice lawyer Patti Goldman said. “EPA’s job is to regulate their use so they don’t violate the Endangered Species Act, but their own sister agency in the federal government has found them miserably failing at (the) obligation.”

NOAA Fisheries spokesman Brian Gorman stressed that the letter was merely a draft and never was sent to the EPA. He said the fisheries agency is working with the EPA “to determine the safety and proper use of these pesticides.

“We have no issues as far as I can tell with EPA about our mutual goals,” Gorman said. “It’s not like we’re in a food fight with the EPA.”

A call to EPA headquarters was not returned Monday, and Bill Dunbar, a spokesman in the agency’s Seattle office, said he could not comment.

Erika Schreder, a staff scientist with the Washington Toxics Coalition, said she is troubled that NOAA Fisheries isn’t standing by the statements made in the draft letter.

“What we’ve seen is a pattern of the higher-ups basically quashing what the scientists are saying,” Schreder said.

The EPA is in the midst of studying the potential risks some 54 pesticides might pose to salmon in rivers throughout Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

In January, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary ban on the use of 38 pesticides near salmon streams throughout the region, pending a final decision in a lawsuit that environmental groups have filed alleging that even tiny amounts of toxins in rivers harm salmon.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour barred the use of the pesticides – from agricultural sprays to household weed-killers – within 20 yards of salmon-bearing streams until the EPA determines whether they likely would harm protected fish. He also banned aerial spraying of pesticides within 100 yards of streams except for public health reasons such as mosquito control.