Richard Gupton with the Agricultural Retailers Associations rejoins The Scoop Podcast to give an update from DC. With the failure to reauthorize CFATS and EPA’s announcements around pesticide regulations, Gupton shares what retailers need to know about how these actions effect their business.
“The uncertainty with some of the regulations impacting the industry is an issue–there’s a whole host of things,” Gupton says. “ARA is trying to stay on top of these and try to address them by working with our members of Congress and the Federal agencies to make sure that they’re working for the people or the industry and make sure they have common sense regulations and laws being put in place to help protect our members’ freedom to operate.”
For example, on July 27, 2023 the Department of Homeland Security’s Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards program expired—this was after the House passed a 2-year reauthorization and the senate didn’t take up its vote in time before the August recess.
“The program has worked well for the industry in how it provided regulatory certainty for high risk chemical facilities,” Gupton says. “Now, the program is expired. You can’t access things at the Department of Homeland Security for those regulated facilities. We encourage members to still operate as if they’re complying with those regulations to make sure their facilities are secure.”
He continues: “It’s an important program and again, we want some regulatory certainty. Our members are not opposed to regulations in general, but they need to make sense. This is one of the programs that has worked.”
Another source of regulatory uncertainty has been recent announcements by the EPA.
“With the EPA it seems like every other day there’s a press release being announced about a study or changes to how they are registering and allowing the use of products,” Gupton says. “For example, atrazine, they’re trying to continue to take atrazine out of the marketplace by the excessive regulations on the registration process by going from proposal levels of concern from 15 parts per million down to 3.4 which would impact 65 million acres for corn, sorghum and sugarcane.”
Gupton says public meetings on August 22 and August 24 give an opportunity for the industry to voice the need for atrazine as a crop protection tool.
Additional examples include the proposed regulation of PFAS (forever chemicals) and potentially including any application of biosolids to be regulated as Superfund sites, which Gupton says American Farm Bureau is actively campaigning to stop.
And EPA is scheduled to make an announcement regarding Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) by September 1.
“This is their response to the Supreme Court, which is claimed to be a “surgical change” to their regulations,” he says. “We’re concerned about what their surgical response will be. They should just work with stakeholders and state regulators to make sure it’s a workable program.”
