Inside EPA Includes Quotes From James V. Aidala In The Article “Democrats Seek PRIA Passage After EPA Vows To Preserve Pesticide Rules”

On January 7, 2019, Inside EPA featured comments by James V. Aidala, Vice President, Policy and Government Affairs with The Acta Group (Acta^®), regarding new efforts to reauthorize the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA) program.

EPA’s authority to collect fees lapsed Dec. 21 when lawmakers failed to approve legislation funding EPA and other agencies, depriving them of a legislative vehicle to which they could attach a PRIA reauthorization.

While the agency’s pesticides office operated under the partial shutdown for a week, the Office of Pesticide Programs joined the shutdown Dec. 28 when the rest of the agency shuttered, the law firm Bergeson & Campbell, which advises industry clients, said in a statement on its website late last year.

Given the uncertainty surrounding EPA’s funding and PRIA reauthorization could lead to lengthy delays, the firm advised that registrants not submit applications for EPA review under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act until PRIA is reauthorized and imposes new deadlines for any review.

But the attorneys also noted that the immediate affect of any PRIA reauthorization deal would be limited, because the shutdown will prevent EPA from acting on newly submitted applications.

Jim Aidala, a former EPA toxics chief in the Clinton administration who now works at Bergeson & Campbell, said in an interview that the lapse in PRIA authorization means applicants “don’t have to submit a fee” to submit a new registration application, though without the EPA authority intact, they will not have the certainty provided by EPA deadlines.

“To get deadlines, you have to submit a fee,” he says.

And, he adds, because EPA is shuttered, there is no one available to even calculate the agency’s registration deadlines. “Right now, no one is there to open the mail. So how are you going to figure out day one?” he says.

While eventual passage of a PRIA deal will provide some certainty, it will now take the government reopening to resume full review of pesticide registrations.

See – https://insideepa.com/daily-news/democrats-seek-pria-passage-after-epa-vows-preserve-pesticide-rules (subscription required)