SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1;

LENGTH: 1147 words

HEADLINE: Pesticide Restriction Puts Hagel in Motion

BYLINE: JAKE THOMPSON

SOURCE: WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

DATELINE: Washington

BODY:
The Environmental Protection Agency's formal announce-ment Thursday of restrictions on the pesticide Dursban showcases the government in full battle mode, shielding Americans from what it says are dangerous chemicals. But on Capitol Hill, lawmakers led by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and one of his House counterparts also are combat ready, worried about the restrictions' impact on farmers. They are armed with a bill, largely drafted by the industries that the EPA regulates, that would require the EPA to use hard scientific evidence when writing regulations as opposed to being able to invoke restrictions on the basis of risk factors gathered from research data. The standoff offers a window into the wrangling that goes on behind the scenes during the construction of legislation and policies that touch Americans' everyday life. On one side of the battle stands the EPA, which says the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act gives the agency the authority to write new pesticide regulations that seek to safeguard the brain development of infants and children. On the other side stand Hagel, 39 Republican and Democratic Senate colleagues and more than 200 House members, who have introduced bills to rein in the EPA. They are concerned that what they see as the EPA's misplaced zeal might harm the ability of farmers and others to kill insects that damage crops, kill fairways and greens and bedevil homeowners. Hagel is pressing for hearings in the Senate Agriculture Committee, both on his bill and on whether the EPA can justify how it establishes its risk standards. The EPA's analysis may ban other pesticides "based on a worst-case scenario everywhere, whether it's relevant, whether it's realistic, whether it's real life or not," Hagel said. "Yes, we must protect the environment and health and not allow dangerous pesticides and chemicals to be used," he said. "But at the same time we must use some common sense. It's almost an EPA mind-set that you're guilty until proven innocent." On Thursday, the EPA found Dursban, the common name for the chemical chlorpyrifos, guilty after examining more than 300 studies. It will ban its home use and will curb some agricultural uses, EPA Admin-istrator Carol Browner said. Under an agreement that heads off further regulations, Dow Chemical and five other producers said they will halt production of chlorpyrifos for virtually all nonagricultural uses. Browner said at a press conference that the 1996 law had enabled the environmental agency to move more swiftly than ever to reduce risks of exposure to the country's most vulnerable individuals - children. An additional 45 pesticides are currently under EPA scrutiny. An EPA official said that if Hagel's bill were in effect, the agency wouldn't have been able to take its actions against Dursban. "We do not support the bills," the EPA official said. "We think they unnecessarily and inappropriately prohibit our ability to protect the environment and particularly the health of our children." The battle began soon after the Food Quality Protection Act, which Con-gress unanimously approved, was signed into law by President Clinton. It requires the EPA to reduce acceptable exposures to pesticides tenfold unless the agency has data showing that it doesn't need to go that far. Agricultural groups in Nebraska, including the Nebraska Farm Bureau, raised an alarm with Hagel that the agency might use the law to ban pesticides they needed to control bugs and produce bountiful yields of corn, soybeans and other crops. "I was concerned," Hagel said, "as the ag producers were concerned, that EPA was going to take the hardest interpretation it possibly could, like EPA does, especially with this administration on these kinds of things." In 1998, he wrote the EPA urging it to avoid mere assumptions that might result in numerous changes in how pesticides can be used. Instead, he said, the agency should rely on hard scientific data. At about the same time, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., was hearing from agricultural producers in his state. In Washington, a broad coalition of more than five dozen farm organ-izations, pesticide-makers and applicators formed to monitor and work with the EPA. The group named itself the Implementation Working Group, according to Mark Maslyn, a top official in the American Farm Bureau Federation's Washington office and chairman of the IWG. Pombo's staff drafted a bill and shared it with the Implementation Working Group early last year, Maslyn said. The group then turned to a Virginia consulting firm Jellinek, Schwartz & Connolly Inc. Edward C. Gray, a senior vice president of the firm and former general counsel at the EPA, wrote a new version that was given to Pombo, Maslyn said. The draft and the 22-page bill Pombo introduced about a year ago are nearly identical, except for about three pages. After Pombo's bill was introduced, it came to Hagel's staff's attention. Hagel's office approached Maslyn's group and worked with them, Maslyn said. Hagel's staff also consulted with farm groups and others in Nebraska, said Deb Fiddelke, Hagel's press secretary. Hagel introduced his Regulatory Openness and Fairness Act of 1999 last summer. The 34-page bill contains 22 pages that are nearly identical to the Implementation Working Group's draft. That includes the main theme of insisting that the EPA seek more scientific backing for its decisions. Critics contend that Hagel's bill would upend the tenfold safety factor by requiring the EPA to first have hard scientific data to justify lowering acceptable exposures to pesticides. Todd Hettenbach, a policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based group advocating sharp cutbacks in pesticide use, said Hagel and Pombo worked too closely with the industry, which had a clear financial reason to try to frustrate the EPA's efforts. Maslyn countered that the process was the "normal ebb and flow" that often occurs in Washington around the creation of laws. "There's nothing untoward or unethical there," he said. Senate rules allow such collaboration. Hagel said he consulted widely in putting together his legislation and thought it was appropriate to seek comments from the chemical industry because it knows the products best. "When I'm looking at doing something working through other groups, outside groups, who are in league with what I want to do or I'm in league with what they want to do, often we will say, 'Give us some thoughts or give us some language,'" Hagel said. "If I didn't do that or most of us didn't do that up here, I'd have to hire twice the staff." To Hettenbach's point, Hagel offered a quick rebuttal. "Their implication is that we're trying to make the world less safe for the consumer. That's just complete nonsense," he said. "Some of us believe the EPA has overstepped its boundary."

LOAD-DATE: June 9, 2000