On October 17, 2018, the Fall 2018 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions and Regulatory Plan was released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Regulatory Agenda is a listing of all the regulations that federal agencies and Departments expect to have under active consideration for promulgation, proposal, or review during the coming six to 12-month period.
Included in the Regulatory Agenda is EPA’s plan to issue a final regulation rescinding the 2015 “waters of the United States” rule by March 2019. In other listed actions, EPA intends to issue a final rule in September 2019 on changes to requirements contained in the Agricultural Worker Protection Standard (WPS) related to minimum age, application exclusion zones (AEZ), entry restrictions for enclosed space production, and other revisions. The Agency is also proposing to amend its Certification of Pesticide Applicators rule by revising the minimum age requirements for individuals certified to use Restricted Use Pesticides (RUPs) and for non-certified individuals who use RUPs under the supervision of a certified applicator. EPA expects to issue a final rule in September 2019.
EPA has also been revising the current pesticide crop grouping regulations to create new crop groupings, add new subgroups, and expand existing crop groups with the addition of new commodities. The current crop groupings allow EPA to establish pesticide tolerances for multiple related crops based upon data for a representative set of crops. The Agency states that these revisions will promote greater use of crop grouping for tolerance-setting purposes and will facilitate the availability of pesticides for minor crop uses. EPA finalized the fourth phase of its crop grouping revisions in May 2016 and is planning to propose a fifth phase by February 2019 and then a sixth phase by June 2019.
In other activities, EPA is considering changes to several procedural regulations that require the publication of a notice in the Federal Register for purposes of providing information on the registration of a pesticide product with a new active ingredient or new use; the approval of specific quarantine and public health exemptions; and summaries of certain state registrations. Rather than announcing the availability of such information through publication of a Federal Register notice, EPA plans to develop a consolidated website for posting such information. EPA states that this will be a more cost effective and efficient mechanism for sharing such information with the public.
