The Vermont Agency of Agriculture is seeking to limit access to pesticide usage data, thus threatening both the public’s right to know and the Vermont Pesticide Advisory Council’s (VPAC) ability to act. It’s urgent that Vermonters contact their legislators now and ask them to stop the Ag Agency’s sneaky attempts to keep the public in the dark about pesticide usage in the state.
Specifically, the Ag Agency has successfully lobbied for language to be included in H.16 (page 29), a bill updating the status of commissions and councils like VPAC, that would no longer require VPAC to produce an annual report on its progress in fulfilling its mission to “reduce statewide pesticide use.” The reason? According to the Ag Agency, “Because they haven’t issued a report in years.”
But what the Ag Agency didn’t tell the legislature was that these reports haven’t been filed in years because the Agency hasn’t been following the law and providing the pesticide usage data to VPAC – or the public. In fact, the last time the Ag Agency published such data was in 2013!
Instead of rewarding the Ag Agency for not doing its job, the legislature should demand that they follow the law by collecting and reporting the data and, as a result, allowing VPAC to do its job of tracking its progress in reducing the threats from the hundreds of thousands of pounds of pesticides used on the state’s farms, golf courses, utility right-of-ways, and railways.
Call your legislators today, and tell them to remove the language from H.16 that releases VPAC from its pesticide reporting requirements. And ask them to do what they can to force the Ag Agency to follow the law! Locate your representatives and contact information here, or call the Statehouse switchboard — 802-828-2228 — to leave a message. The House is looking to move this bill through soon, so call now (please).
