State, private groups seek to end U.S. agencies' 'turf war'

By MATTHEW WEAVER

Capital Press

A grower group and the Washington State Department of Agriculture are pushing the two federal agencies responsible for managing endangered fish to work together.

The Washington Association of Wheat Growers and WSDA want the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, to stop duplicating their work and to do it in the open.

EPA is consulting with NMFS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under a 2002 court order on mitigating the effects of some pesticides on threatened and endangered salmon runs.

WAWG president Brett Blankenship said the current process is "clearly broken and dysfunctional."

The agriculture department collected data showing salmon are protected when farmers follow the EPA label on pesticides. Water samples are well under thresholds of concern under the Endangered Species Act, Blankenship and department director Dan Newhouse said.

"It really boils down to a turf war between EPA and NOAA Fisheries," Blankenship said.

Blankenship said NOAA Fisheries duplicates a lot of the same work as EPA in analyzing pesticides. It should be done only once, he said, pointing out that the federal agencies shouldn't duplicate work.

When NOAA Fisheries issues an opinion, it is without public input, stakeholder input or the best science available, Blankenship said. This can lead to "crazy ideas like 100-foot buffers around every conceivable irrigation canal or stream."

"NOAA Fisheries wants to stick their head in the sand and rely on computer models instead of real-world performance and scientific data," he said. "If it's based on science and we follow the label, that should address everyone's concern."

Jim Lecky, director of the protected resources office for NMFS, said the ESA requires a federal agency to ensure an endangered species will not be threatened when making a decision such as registering a pesticide.

EPA's framework to make such a decision has some gaps, Lecky said, and NMFS tries to fill those gaps with its analyses.

A public review was never expected to be part of the process under the Endangered Species Act because Congress did not want the act to indefinitely delay projects.

Lecky said the agencies are working to develop a process that is more efficient and transparent. The main challenge is that they are operating under court-ordered deadlines to release biological opinions, he said.

"We don't have the luxury of slowing things down to have a more public dialogue," he said.

Lecky said the Washington department's information is not perfect, and it doesn't sample for the amount of exposure for fish. The data isn't enough to characterize the likely effect on salmon over the broad geographic area, which requires computer modeling, he said.

The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture recently passed a resolution supporting Washington's position to encourage improvement of the consultation process and consider the economic impacts, Newhouse said.

"We are doing all we can to get as many people working toward success as we can," Newhouse said. "We have science on our side, so I am optimistic."

NMFS is happy to work with the agency to seek further public opinion, Lecky said. It is in the process of doing so with biological opinions on six more chemicals due for release in early 2011.

"We are interested in having dialogues about how to improve the process," he said. "We just need to do those in a forum that isn't constrained by court orders for an open and honest dialogue."