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April 7, 2017 CapitalPress.com 9 California Huge snowpack prompts state Growers still seeking alternatives officials to revisit drought status to chlorpyrifos despite reprieve Subscribe to our weekly California email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters By TIM HEARDEN By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press Capital Press SACRAMENTO — Is California about to formally declare an end to its five-year drought? After abundant winter rainfall and snow accumu- lation, state officials plan an announcement about Califor- nia’s “drought status” with- in the next week, said Doug Carlson, spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources. Exactly when the state- ment will come is still un- known, as is when and if the State Water Project will in- crease its current allocation of 60 percent of its 29 mem- ber water agencies’ requested supplies, Carlson said. But the DWR’s manual snow survey on March 30, which found a season-high snow-water equivalent of 46.1 inches in the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe, makes the state’s rebound from drought all the more evident, officials say. “I think that the winter season has certainly been en- couraging, and one might be justifiably optimistic about what our availability for wa- ter distribution will be later in the year,” Carlson said. “Cer- tainly it’s a better picture than we’ve seen the last five years. I think anybody can take heart in that.” The manual survey at Phil- lips Station, about 90 miles east of Sacramento, was 183 percent of the late March and early April average for the site, which is 25.2 inch- es. Snow accumulation has increased each month since SACRAMENTO — Don’t expect a renaissance for chlorpyrifos use among Cal- ifornia growers now that the U.S. Environmental Protec- tion Agency has declined to ban the pesticide. So opines Pete Goodell, a University of California Co- operative Extension pest con- trol adviser who held a series of grower workshops last year on the proposed ban. Some growers may be glad to still have chlorpyri- fos available when nothing else works, but in many cases farms have already found al- ternative treatments and pre- ventive measures, he said. “People have shifted away for a number of reasons,” said Goodell, an associate direc- tor of the UC’s Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. “One is that some of the crop may require contracts that say you aren’t going to use certain products. For oth- ers, with the restrictions and regulations, they’ve moved away because it’s not as dif- ficult to use other products.” In California, chlorpyrifos is used to tackle pests that can destroy some 60 different crops, including almonds, al- falfa, walnuts, oranges, cotton and grapes, explained Char- lotte Fadipe, spokeswoman for the state Department of Pesticide Regulation. Use of the pesticide has been declining over the last decade, from more than 2 mil- lion pounds in 2005 to about 1.3 million pounds in 2014, the last year for which data is available, Fadipe said. Growers were sent scram- bling for alternatives when the EPA announced a plan to revoke food residue toleranc- es for chlorpyrifos, which is produced by Dow AgroSci- ences and acts as a contact or stomach poison to pests. The agency took comments in the fall of 2015. But on March 29, new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency was denying a petition by environmental groups to ban the pesticide’s use in agriculture. The EPA banned home use of chlorpy- rifos in 2000 and ordered buffer zones around sensitive Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press Frank Gehrke, right, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the Department of Water Resources, places the snow survey tube on a scale held by Nic Enstice, of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, while doing the manual snow survey at Phillips Station on March 30 near Echo Summit, Calif. State water officials are considering changing California’s drought status. January, when just 6 inches of snow-water equivalent was found. The survey came as elec- tronic measurements showed that water content in the northern Sierra was 40.8 inch- es on March 30, 147 percent of the multi-decade average for the date, according to the DWR. The central Sierra’s 50.5 inches is 175 percent of average, while the 43.9 inches in the southern Sierra is 164 percent of average, the agen- cy reports. The big snowmelt will re- sult in high water in many riv- ers through the spring, state climatologist Michael Ander- son said. “The snowpack at Phil- lips today was almost 8 feet deep,” Carlson said. “That is a tremendous contrast for any- body to recognize what kind of a year it has been. Two years ago … there was literal- ly no snow there.” Northern California leg- islators and water district of- ficials have urged Gov. Jerry Brown to declare that the drought is over, citing the winter’s deluges and heavy snowpack. The governor’s executive orders mandating continued, long-term water savings were appropriate, “but this power should not be abused,” state Sen. Jim Niel- sen, R-Gerber, said in Febru- ary. State water regulators have so far been hesitant, noting that some Central Val- ley communities still depend on trucked and bottled water and that groundwater — the source of at least one-third of the supplies Californians use — will need more than one wet winter to be replenished in many areas. Roads bill would limit truck pollution mandates SACRAMENTO (AP) — A plan to raise taxes and fees to pay for California road re- pairs includes a concession to the trucking industry that would block the state from requiring truck owners to up- grade to lower-emission mod- els. The provision angered en- vironmentalists, who implored lawmakers to reject it Monday, saying it would perpetuate health problems in neighbor- hoods around ports and other areas exposed to a high vol- ume of truck traffic. Commercial truck emis- sions are one of the largest sources of pollution in areas with the dirtiest air, but the giveaway to truckers would undermine future mandates to deal with them, said Adri- an Martinez, an attorney for Earthjustice. “Our communities cannot breathe, and we thought that our right to breathe would be worth more than a few billion dollars in transportation im- provements,” Katie Valenzue- la Garcia told the Senate Ap- propriations Committee. Valenzuela Garcia is the co-chair of a committee that advises the California Air Re- sources Board. Following a rare direct ap- peal from Gov. Jerry Brown, Democrats on the committee voted along party lines to send the measure to the full Senate, which was expected to take it up on Thursday. Tim Hearden/Capital Press Pete Goodell, left, and Lori Berger of the University of California’s Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program prepare to give a presentation on chlorpyrifos at an almond workshop last year in Chico, Calif. Goodell said he doesn’t expect an upsurge in chlorpy- rifos use in California now that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declined to ban the substance for agricultural use. sites, such as schools, in 2012. In recent years, California has put significant controls on the use of chlorpyrifos, requiring training, licensing and local county approval for anyone who uses it. Growers must explain to their county agricultural commissioner when, where and how they want to use the pesticide, and counties require buffers of up to 150 feet between the user and a school, river or other sensitive site. California’s rules remain intact, and the DPR “may put further restrictions in place if warranted,” Fadipe told the Capital Press in an email. In 2014, the DPR con- tracted with the UC’s pest management program to create commodity-specific guidelines for using chlorpy- rifos. Teams focused on its use on alfalfa, almonds, cit- rus fruit and cotton, identi- fying alternatives as well as instances when use of the chemical is critical to pro- tecting the crop. A resulting report by UC IPM examined other pest-control tactics, including pest-resistant varieties, mat- ing disruption, field sanitation and other insecticides. But in some cases, no al- ternatives were available. For instance, almond growers need chlorpyrifos to com- bat leaffooted plant bugs and stink bugs, which both feed on and damage developing nuts, scientists found. “It’s still one of those tools … that’s good to have there in situations when you do need it,” Goodell said. Several farm groups put out statements praising Pruitt’s announcement. Cali- fornia Citrus Mutual president Joel Nelsen said the decision shows that the EPA is taking more of a science-based ap- proach to regulating pesti- cides. Among chlorpyrifos’ uses for citrus growers is to battle the Asian citrus psyllid, which can carry the deadly tree dis- ease huanglongbing. National Council of Farm- er Cooperatives president Chuck Conner said he hopes the decision “can serve as a roadmap as the EPA moves forward in assessing other crop protectants in the review and registration process.” But the Center for Food Safety complained that Presi- dent Donald Trump’s admin- istration disregarded long- term studies from the EPA and National Institutes of Health concluding that exposure to chlorpyrifos could harm chil- dren’s brains. “This reversal … is a frightening indicator that the new administration will stop at nothing to protect corporate interests,” said Andrew Kim- brell, the center’s executive director. Large Transmission Power Lines on Your Property? Lease Us Your Land! 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