Pesticide Reduction Advocates Bug Regulators Over Apparent Lack of Compliance

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One day a handful of years ago, Ed Stockman was driving through his hometown of Plainfield when he says he saw people setting up a large pesticide sprayer in a field next to the home of a woman with a compromised respiratory system. A fourth generation farmer and an agrobiologist, Stockman was worried about how the chemicals would impact her health.

“She says, ‘Oh, they’re not going to spray today, it’s too windy,’” he recalled. But that’s exactly what happened, the chemicals blowing all over and onto her home. “She gets sprayed, she gets compromised.”

The woman, Stockman said, had to abandon her house and stay in a hotel for four days. However, he said that when he contacted the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, or MDAR, which oversees and regulates pesticide use in the state, it took an investigator two weeks to come out. By then, he said, rains had washed away the evidence of pesticides and the agency did nothing to rectify the situation.

The incident, he said, is indicative of the agency’s lack of urgency when it comes to protecting residents from the harms of those chemicals. “Nothing ever happens,” he said.

Stockman is part of a statewide consumer education organization, Regeneration Massachusetts, that has strong roots in western Mass. The group promotes regenerative organic agriculture and the reduction of pesticide use, and in recent years has been sounding the alarm about what they say is the state’s failure to reduce pesticide use and to track those reduction efforts as part of a law passed more than 20 years ago. 

Regeneration Massachusetts has consistently drawn attention to the dangers of pesticides, which can cause cancer, affect the nervous system, irritate the skin or eyes, and cause harm to a person’s hormone or endocrine system, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And as experts predict that climate change will make New England a hotspot for invasive plants, animals and insects, Regeneration Massachusetts members say pesticide use is likely to increase in the coming years with enormous impacts on human and environmental health.  

In particular, the group has called out MDAR, alleging that the agency has not complied with a provision contained in a bill passed in 2000 — known as “An Act to Protect the Health of Children and Families from Harmful Pesticides” — that requires MDAR to submit annual reports on pesticide reduction to legislative leaders in the state. The group filed public records requests for those reports to both the state Legislature and MDAR, receiving responses that neither the agency, the Senate nor the House had the reports.

“The whole purpose of this legislation is to get this agency focused on these things and they’re just blowing it off,” said Grant Ingle, another hilltown resident and member of Regeneration Massachusetts.

When The Shoestring reached out to MDAR to inquire about the missing pesticide-reduction reports back in August 2023, a spokesperson said in a statement that those annual reports are important to the administration of Gov. Maura Healey and that the agency had just filed its fiscal year 2022 report with the Legislature. 

“The Healey-Driscoll Administration is committed to fulfilling its legal obligations,” the spokesman said, arguing that MDAR has done so by including relevant pesticide information in its annual report, which is also filed with the legislature each year. He added that “it is important to us that we provide a more detailed report to the legislature every year.”

Regeneration Massachusetts said that the report MDAR released after The Shoestring reached out was the first time that the agency had ever created those reports and sent them to the legislature, as required. In an email to Stockman, MDAR Commissioner Ashley Randle said the agency believes that its past annual reports met all legal requirements.

“Additionally, MDAR has not received any feedback from the legislature, which supports the Department’s belief that this report meets those requirements,” Randle wrote in the email. 

What was in the agency’s fiscal year 2022 report was also a concern to Regeneration Massachusetts.

In a letter to Randle in December, Stockman raised concerns that MDAR was not satisfying its legal mandate to “promote the use of biologic controls, integrated pest management, sustainable agriculture and other alternate pest control methods through education, technical assistance and research in order to reduce or eliminate, whenever possible, human or environmental exposures to chemical pesticides.”

“Pesticide reduction is an important issue for many citizens of the Commonwealth,” Stockman wrote. “It is essential that this lack of adherence to the required actions and criteria … be rectified and the promotion of alternatives to pesticide use be conducted by MDAR.”

In her response, Randle wrote that when developing its 2023 report, MDAR “will work to include additional information about Integrated Pest Management education/outreach that is conducted with the industry.” A spokesperson told The Shoestring that the agency is in the process of producing that report now.

Regeneration Massachusetts also raised concerns about the large number of new pesticide products that the agency’s Pesticide Board Subcommittee approved in fiscal year 2022, according to the annual report. In total, 736 new products were registered with the board, including ten containing new active ingredients. 

During the period covered by the report, the Pesticide Board Subcommittee did vote to ban the widely used pesticides called “neonicotinoids” because of the harm they cause to bees and other pollinators. Massachusetts was the first state to do so through regulations, according to reporting from GBH. But to those in Regeneration Massachusetts who spoke to The Shoestring, those efforts don’t go nearly far enough.

During fiscal year 2022, MDAR’s report shows that the agency conducted 306 total inspections of pesticide use. The agency issued 47 warning letters after those inspections, none of which related to agricultural use of pesticides. The agency issued six fines, one of which was based on agricultural use of pesticides.

Lawmakers can also take action to limit pesticide use, and there are some groups and western Mass legislators who have been active in that fight. 

The Northeast Organic Farming Association, for example, spent $24,587 in 2022 lobbying for the passage of several bills “related to small farm regulations, measures to incentivize agroecological and organic agriculture and reduce pesticides use,” according to state lobbying records. Those included bills that were sponsored by western Mass lawmakers like state Sen. Jo Comerford, Rep. Mindy Domb, Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, and former Sen. Adam Hinds. The group spent $22,972 again in 2023 on similar efforts, records show.

However, those efforts appear to have failed during that legislative cycle.

In a July 2023 op-ed in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, a member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Policy Committee, Carole Horowitz, expressed disappointment by the Legislature’s failure that year to limit toxic pesticides in the state. Horowitz wrote that despite significant grassroots testimony in favor of a slate of pesticide-reform bills, not one of those bills became law, leaving that coalition pessimistic about the power of the pesticide lobby and its influence in the Legislature.

“The undemocratic Massachusetts Legislature, where everything is controlled by a few in leadership positions and the power of individual legislators is greatly diminished, favors corporate lobbyists who exert their influence behind closed doors,” Horowitz wrote. “It’s obvious to us that this is where the obstacle to passing pesticide legislation lies.”

Lobbying records show that those looking to reduce the amount of pesticides are indeed up against powerful corporate interests who have poured far more money into the political system in Massachusetts. In 2022, some of the biggest chemical companies in the world spent big money to lobby lawmakers on Beacon Hill. 

State lobbying records show that the German company Bayer AG, for example, spent $42,000 on lobbyists who sought to influence lawmakers on bills seeking to ban or limit glyphosate, the active ingredient in Bayer’s herbicide roundup. A UCLA study published that same year found higher rates of thyroid cancer among people who lived close to places where glyphosate and other pesticides are used.

Bayer wasn’t alone. Together, a handful of chemical interests spent another $138,000 looking to buy influence in the state’s capital that year, lobbying records show. Those include the agrochemical trade association CropLife America, the New England Pest Control Association, and the lawn-care company Scotts. 

In 2023, Bayer, CropLife America and the New England Pest Control Association spent a total of $93,840 lobbying Massachusetts lawmakers, records show.

This year, the Northeast Organic Farming Association is backing three bills in particular, which must be moved out of legislative committee by Feb. 7 or they die on the vine for this legislative session. One of those bills would create a state “Pesticide Reform Task Force” while another would return control over pesticide use to local communities. A third bill was recently reported favorably out of the House Ways and Means Committee. 

“This combined bill, which was approved by both chambers last year, would create an online portal and database for pesticide use reporting records with clear, online public access to the annual data and it would require that pesticides be proven safe before being used on playgrounds and fields where children learn and play,” the organization wrote.

Meanwhile, activists like Stockman are continuing to put pressure on MDAR to use the power of regulations to limit pesticide use and its harm to humans and the natural world.

“Somebody needs to put pressure on the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources to be responsible, to be accountable and to actually do what the law requires them to do,” he said. 

An MDAR spokesperson said that the agency is currently working on its 2023 pesticide-reduction report.

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Dusty Christensen is an independent investigative reporter based in western Massachusetts. He can be reached at dusty.christensen@protonmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @dustyc123 or on Instagram @dustycreports.

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