Over 45 Comments Submitted to the US EPA on Persistent Herbicides

No one in our industry ever wants to see the term "killer compost” in the media! But that is exactly what happened in two major metro areas this spring in Portland, OR and Raleigh-Durham, NC, says USCC Associate Director Cary Oshins. In both cases, compost with dangerous levels of persistent herbicides were delivered by large compost manufacturers to local garden stores – and from there to hundreds of homeowners. Folks stuck at home due to the pandemic have been turning to home gardening in a big way – it’s the new Victory Garden – and many of our members are reporting record compost sales. So you can imagine the heartbreak and distress when the gardeners’ tomatoes, potatoes or cucumbers were stunted, distorted or just didn’t grow!

One silver lining to this is that it just so happens that right now is the open comment period on the reregistration of one of the worst of the persistent herbicides: Clopyralid. (Clopyralid was one of the first of the class of herbicides to come to market and was the source of the first round of "killer compost” news stories back in 2000). The process that the US EPA uses to evaluate herbicides, while evaluating safety to people, animals and the environment where it is used, has never looked at the downstream potential impacts via composting. Despite repeated meetings with the US EPA, that was only slowly changing. 

In June, we launched a campaign to get folks to tell the US EPA to fix that! This campaign led by Advocacy & Membership Director Linda Norris-Waldt has seen dramatic results. In addition to commenting directly, we also are urging impacted compost users to submit incident reports through our confidential reporting tool. Those reports are key, because the scientists at the US EPA have complained in the past that they had no clear evidence that herbicide persistence in compost was really a problem. Well, they can complain no more! Thanks to the dozens of incident reports, plus some research done by Fred Michel at OSU and Tera Lewandowski at Scotts, they now have data that cannot be ignored.

We documented that evidence in USCC’s official comments, which you can view here.

By publishing date of this Communicator, the US EPA had received 48 comments on their site; many were listed anonymously, but we also thank members Brenda Platt (ILSR), Dan Matsch (Eco-Cycle), Bob Yost (A-1 Organics), Dino Zanolini (SoilandCo), Jack Hoeck (Rexius Forest Products), Eric Walter (Black Bear Composting), Ryan Williams (Greengo Recycling) and Kathleen McFarlane (McFarlane's Bark) for their comments, which could be seen by name. A few more than half of the comments came from master gardeners/home gardeners/master composters, with the remainder coming from compost operators. Furthermore, 117 people have submitted incident reports. Most of the comments came from NC and OR, but also include CA, NE and VA.

Indeed, the numerous comments received by the US EPA may have forced them to extend the comment period for 30 days to August 5.

WE NEED MORE! Click here to learn more about how to comment and points you can use for your messaging. Advocacy is one of the most important roles you play as a US Composting Council Member. Thank you for your work!