Bismarck, ND (AgNews890.com) – The North Dakota Department of Agriculture issued a statement today saying that the state was not equip to handle the safe disposal of chlorpyrifos.

Below is the statement from their website:

Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring has advised the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the North Dakota pesticide disposal program, Project Safe Send, does not have the resources or funding to accept large quantities of chlorpyrifos for disposal, nor the authority to charge for disposal of the product.

The EPA announced in August 2021 that food tolerances of chlorpyrifos would be revoked on Feb. 28, 2022, and has recently directed North Dakota chlorpyrifos users and distributors to the North Dakota pesticide disposal program for disposal of on-hand chlorpyrifos.

“The EPA only permitted six months from the date of its revocation announcement until the food tolerances would expire. This decision rendered vast stocks of chlorpyrifos product existing in the supply chain unusable,” Goehring said. “The timing of this revocation in August of 2021 did not take into consideration the fact that the growing season was coming to an end for most commodities and applications were already completed, therefore leaving an unreasonable amount of time to exhaust existing product.”

“The North Dakota pesticide disposal program, Project Safe Send, does not have the resources or funding to accept large quantities of chlorpyrifos for disposal,” Goehring said. “We request that the EPA cease directing North Dakota chlorpyrifos users and distributors to Project Safe Send for disposal as we will be unable to accept it.”