Limits on pesticides to protect salmon in Pacific Northwest may affect agricultural production

The Environmental Protection Agency has imposed new limits on use of three pesticides by Pacific Northwest farmers. The regulations follow a 2008 National Marine Fisheries Service decision to require limits on the pesticides, which drain into many of the 28 federally protected salmon runs, in Oregon, Washington Idaho and California, Matthew Preusch of The Oregonian reports.

The chemicals are diazinon, malathion and chlorpyrifos. "This is a class of chemicals that is widely used in most crops threatened by insects," Terry Witt, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter, a group that lobbies against government regulations affecting natural-resource industries, told Preusch. Witt says the restrictions could reduce the productivity of valuable cropland in areas near salmon runs.

"Our goal is to rebuild the healthy salmon stocks native to the Pacific Northwest," Joshua Osborne-Klein, an Earthjustice attorney, said in a statement." Getting agricultural poisons out of salmon spawning streams is one of many needed actions to see the salmon stocks rebuilt." A tiered system that bases restrictions on the kind of waterway that's nearby and the amount of pesticide being applied worries environmental groups, Preusch reports. "We have a real concern that pesticide users are going to have difficulty finding out what applies to them,"Osborne-Klein told Preusch. (Read more)