On April 12, 2018, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway (R-Texas) released the Committee’s draft Farm Bill reauthorization, the “Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018” (H.R. 2). The House Agriculture Committee passed the Farm Bill package on April 18, 2018, setting it up for a floor vote in the House.  The 600-plus page draft legislation includes a number of provisions that will be of interest to pesticide registrants and the pesticide user community, including the following sections:

• Section 9119. Enactment of Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2017: This provision would enact the Pesticide Registration Improvement Extension Act (known as PRIA-4), which authorizes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to continue to collect $40 million in registration and maintenance fees critical to supporting the pesticide registration process.
• Section 8303. Consultation under the Endangered Species Act (ESA): Subsection (a) would eliminate ESA Section 7 consultation requirements for U.S. Forest Service projects where a “not likely to adversely affect” determination has been made. Subsection (b) requires ESA Section 7 consultation for forest management activities carried out under the Farm Bill to be completed within a 90-day period.
• Sections 9117 and 9118. Clean Water Act (CWA) Pesticide Permitting:  Together these two provisions amend the CWA and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to eliminate CWA National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting for FIFRA-compliant pesticide applications.  These sections incorporate the regulatory relief language from previously proposed stand-alone bills aimed at eliminating the dual regulation of pesticide applications into, over, and near surface waters, which passed the House in the 115th Congress (H.R. 953) and has been proposed in the Senate (S.340).

The full text of H.R. 2 and a section-by-section summary are available on the House Agriculture Committee Farm Bill webpage along with several related fact sheets.  The Agriculture Committee expects to mark-up the bill this week.