Since Governor Gavin Newsom took office, the state’s relationship with county agricultural commissioners has steadily declined amid a stream of new directives concerning pesticide enforcement, according to Riverside County Agricultural Commissioner Ruben Arroyo. He worried that could impact pest control advisors as well.
“There are a lot of things that are going on in California in regards to a wave of environmental justice,” said Arroyo, who spoke Monday at the annual conference of the California Association of Pest Control Advisors. “Science isn't necessarily on the forefront of how these regulations and laws are being put in place.”
Stepping onto the stage each year, Arroyo has shared his challenges in working with the Department of Pesticide Regulation as it crafts new use restrictions and launches programs on environmental justice in socially disadvantaged communities. His presentation this week served as an exit interview ahead of his retirement in early 2024.
Looking back, Arroyo blamed former Director Val Dolcini for “crushing” the relationship when he led the department in 2019-2021. He noted that commissioners are dealing directly with CalEPA more than ever and that staff from the umbrella agency have been filling the vacant roles in DPR, including the current director, Julie Henderson, who is a lawyer by training. But Henderson is “not the emperor of everything called pesticide,” he said, noting the involvement of CalEPA Secretary Yana Garcia and Governor Gavin Newsom.
Arroyo raised alarms over the administration’s pursuit of a concept dubbed sustainable pest management (SPM), which borrows terminology from integrated pest management to build policies to reduce the use of conventional pesticides deemed hazardous and finding replacement products and practices. SPM is now embedded in DPR’s mission statement and strategic plan and is a driving factor for increasing the mill assessment, the pesticide sales tax that accounts for most of DPR’s budget.
“The department already has people and they're supposed to use science to get rid of pesticides if they're harming the environment, if they're harming the people,” he said. “Why do we need additional funding for SPM?”
Arroyo said Caltrans is now considering SPM in its rulemaking for regulations governing weed abatement along roadways. He revealed that Henderson has expressed interest in a SPM pilot near schools in Kern County and said the idea has raised considerable confusion among commissioners over what such a project would entail.
“Sustainable pest management is not a rule. It's an idea. It's not a law. It's not a regulation yet,” he said. “Whether I agree with it or not, that's what the department has decided to do, because the governor is for sustainable pest management.”
He worried about the pressure put on industry to come up with alternatives to pesticides “on the hit list” or to adopt new mitigation measures and said agriculture has been fractured in its response to SPM and not had a unified voice, as it has had with water and labor issues.
He pointed to new regulations on neonicotinoids that will take effect in January and said that some farm groups felt they could live with a more dynamic approach to mitigation that varies with crop types and the time of year. Yet he raised issues over enforcing a regulation based on bloom times, when Riverside County does not declare petal fall, and leaving it up to commissioners to decide if flowers are present. He argued the regulations conflict with federal EPA labels on neonicotinoids that prohibit applications while bees are foraging but allow applications at night when the pollinators are dormant.
Arroyo also cautioned PCAs to prepare for new requirements for PPE and eye washing stations on every truck in the field during pesticide applications, as part of the administration’s effort to align agriculture with other industries. He also warned that DPR will be requiring more information on adjuvants on labels, since California considers the additive to be a pesticide, while the federal government does not. After outcry from environmental justice groups, DPR is also considering new standards for the fumigant 1,3-D, or Telone, to protect occupational bystanders.
Arroyo has long engaged on efforts to establish notification systems that alert residents in advance of nearby pesticide applications. Yet he is skeptical of DPR’s early attempts with a statewide system, which would publicly post a grower’s notice of intent (NOI) to apply a pesticide, while redacting the exact address. Arroyo worried it would “ruin a perfectly good NOI program” by encouraging growers to submit more NOIs to retain some flexibility in their decision making for applications and to avoid public scrutiny. A Kern County grower, for example, once received a violation from one of Arroyo’s inspectors after failing to submit an NOI ahead of an application, and he later retaliated by filling out an NOI every three days. Arroyo has warned Henderson that such fake NOIs will happen with the notification system if it draws more activists to farms.
Starting next month, DPR will beta test the system in Tulare County, with a statewide launch planned for 2024. Environmental justice groups have delayed the rollout and pushed DPR to expand the number of users in the pilot program from 100 to 150, though just 30 have signed up so far, according to Arroyo. That has led DPR to conduct outreach sessions in the county “to drum up business” and boost signups. He stressed that agriculture has not been involved in the outreach campaign and the beta test is not a cooperative effort between the department and commissioners. Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner Tom Tucker can pull the plug on the test if it leads to protests. If it is successful, Kern County Agricultural Commissioner Glenn Fankhauser would conduct a second beta test. Arroyo noted that activists have personally attached Fankhauser and confronted him at hearings of the commissioner’s governing board.
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To implement the system and make changes to the NOI rules, DPR would undergo a regulatory rulemaking process. Arroyo stressed to PCAs to get involved with that process and share their feedback, since DPR is required to respond to those comments.
“Let them know this is going to be a cost that is going to hurt your business,” he said. “If you don't agree with it, let them know why.”
Tulare County Ag Commissioner Tom TuckerHenderson addressed some of Arroyo’s concerns in a separate panel discussion at the conference on Tuesday. She explained that the interest of Caltrans in SPM is rooted in an interagency work group that is coordinating programs and related funding that intersect with pesticide programs and that can support the SPM plan. Henderson said the group has served as a catalyst for addressing redundancies across agencies.
She acknowledged that the SPM Roadmap DPR released in January is guiding the policy framework for the administration’s efforts to overhaul the mill assessment.
“We're really looking to the roadmap as the lens to guide us going forward,” said Henderson.
In an interview with Agri-Pulse following the conference, Henderson noted that two PCAs were involved in crafting the roadmap and DPR has been conducting outreach efforts to solicit feedback from PCAs and others. After releasing the roadmap, Henderson and CDFA Undersecretary Christine Birdsong embarked on a six-county tour to gather on-the-ground feedback from a variety of stakeholders.
On the issue of a school SPM project, DPR is considering such demonstration projects to illustrate what SPM looks like in practice and to reveal any challenges or opportunities. The idea, she explained, has been under discussion but DPR has not settled on a specific demonstration project. Similarly, DPR has found value in pilot projects for the notification system and Henderson hopes to gather a more functional perspective on the system as well as detailed feedback from users in the Tulare County test.
Henderson said she has “a very good working relationship” with many agricultural commissioners as well as the current president and the president-elect of the California Agricultural Commissioners and Sealers Association.
“We completely understand that any kind of change is challenging,” she said.
Yet she reasoned that major changes must happen adapt to the impacts of “climate change, weather swings, increasing past pressures, tools that are no longer effective, increasing science emerging about human health risks.” She said it took “a lot of tough conversations” to develop the holistic, system-wide approach called for in the roadmap.
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