Legislative Issues and Updates

The USEPA released its Pesticides and Ground Water Strategy in October 1991. A goal of this strategy is to manage pesticides in the environment in order to protect ground-water resources, and an essential theme is the prevention of pesticide risks to humans and the environment. Pesticides determined by the USEPA to be leachable to ground water would be permitted to remain registered in a state only when used under a USEPA-approved pesticide-specific state management plan (SMP). By adhering to this strategy, USEPA believes that a compound-specific SMP will prevent ground-water contamination by restricting the use of a given pesticide in hydrogeologically sensitive areas. Before implementation of the compound-specific SMP, the USEPA encouraged individual states to develop generic SMPs (USEPA, 1994b) to serve as templates for all future compound-specific SMPs. This was done anticipating that generic SMPs would facilitate the development and approval of compound-specific SMPs. A key distinction is that the development of generic SMPs is voluntary, whereas the development of compound-specific SMPs is mandatory. However, states must develop management plans for specific pesticides. The experience of developing generic plans should be useful in helping state pesticidecontrol officials develop compound-specific plans.