SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — In a win for environmental and farmworker groups, a Ninth Circuit panel on Wednesday rolled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of the use of the pesticide streptomycin sulfate on citrus groves to fight citrus disease.
The underlying lawsuit was brought by farmworkers and other interest groups, which argued the EPA had greenlit streptomycin sulfate for use on citrus plants without adequately considering potential harms from the chemical. The agency had to first determine the chemical would not cause “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment,” as required by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). In their lawsuit, the groups argued the agency failed to do so.
The panel, consisting of U.S. Circuit Judges Ronald Gould and Johnnie Rawlinson, both Clinton appointees, and Daniel Bress, a Trump appointee, partially ruled in favor of the EPA — determining there was substantial evidence for the EPA’s assessment concerning risks which could lead to antibiotic resistance.
However, they said, the EPA’s assessment concerning risks to bees and other pollinators was incomplete.
Bress wrote that the EPA did not fully comply with FIFRA because it “failed to include additional data in its pollinator risk assessment or explain why such data was not necessary” and “suggested that streptomycin could be used to prevent disease without providing evidentiary support for such a claim.”
“Although substantial evidence supported the EPA’s determination that streptomycin was effective at treating Huanglongbing disease and citrus canker, the EPA failed to provide a sufficient explanation for the registration labels’ suggestion that streptomycin could be used to prevent either disease,” Bress wrote. “Accordingly, the panel granted the petition for review as to the pollinator and disease prevention issues so that the EPA could provide either additional support or a more cogent explanation of why the current record was adequate to support the registration, or both.”
Bress wrote that the EPA “admits that it failed to abide” by the Endangered Species Act statute.
“We have previously found ‘troubling’ the ‘EPA’s apparent habit of ignoring ESA’s effect determination and consultation requirements’ in its pesticide registration decisions,” Bress wrote. “We have explained that the EPA may not avoid compliance with the ESA merely because of its own internal regulatory priorities. It is Congress that required the EPA to comply with the ESA when making pesticide registration decisions, and it is our duty to enforce Congress’s command.”
Representatives for the EPA did not respond to requests for comment before deadline. In a statement after the ruling, the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups involved in the suit, applauded the Ninth Circuit's decision.
The rollback of streptomycin approval "is a significant win for public health, farmworker safety and endangered species," Hannah Connor, environmental health deputy director and senior attorney with the group, said in a statement to Courthouse News. "Hopefully this ruling helps push the EPA to finally take seriously its obligation to protect imperiled plants, pollinators and animals from the pesticides it approves."
Streptomycin sulfate is used as an antibiotic to treat serious illnesses but has also found use as a pesticide. The Center for Biological Diversity claims spraying streptomycin on citrus trees to combat citrus greening disease is “highly ineffective” and argues that its use as a pesticide violates the Endangered Species Act because it causes long-term health effects to endangered animals and plants.
To decide on the appropriate remedy, the panel weighed the seriousness of the EPA’s errors against “the disruptive consequences of an interim change that may itself be changed.”
“Given the seriousness of the EPA’s failure to comply with the ESA, as well as its failure to fully comply with FIFRA, the panel held that remand without vacatur would not be an appropriate remedy,” Bress wrote. “Accordingly, the panel vacated the EPA’s amended registration of streptomycin for use on citrus group 10-10, and remanded so that the agency could address the defects in its FIFRA analysis and conduct an ESA effects determination.”
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