EPA Bans Pesticides in SF Bay Area

(San Francisco, California) In 2007, an environmental group filed a lawsuit to ratchet the EPA into conducting an assessment of pesticide use in Bay Area counties despite there being no evidence that the pesticides are harmful to designated Endangered Species List (ESL) flora and fauna.

The EPA settled by banning pesticides in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solana and Sonoma.

The Environmental Protection Agency last week announced its tentative settlement agreement to temporarily ban in eight Bay Area counties the use of 74 pesticides in habitat set aside for 11 imperiled species.

The agency also agreed to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rigorously assess any risks posed by these pesticides to the endangered or threatened species.

That latter step will clear up uncertainty over the effects of these powerful chemicals on animal species deemed near the brink of survival, said Jeff Miller, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, a nonprofit that filed a 2007 lawsuit leading to the settlement.

"The end game is to get them to actually conduct the assessments of what the actual effects are," Miller said.

In a nutshell, there's no evidence that the pesticides harm the endangered and threatened species and there's no evidence that the pesticides do not harm the species. Therefore, a lawsuit was filed and the pesticides were banned despite potential adverse effects on the farming, gardening and wine-making operations in the area.

In my estimation, the lawsuit and the EPA response are nothing more than a fishing expedition by environmentalists trying to find a legitimately-strong reason to ban pesticides. Currently, there is no problem with pesticide use but there's a good chance something will be discovered after a long, hard, taxpayer-funded search.