^£DS7X
• JL v
I®/
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Inspector General
At a Glance
20-P-0012
October 29, 2019
Why We Did This Project
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) Office
of Inspector General (OIG)
conducted this audit to
determine whether the EPA's
negotiation, review and approval
of tribal pesticide enforcement
work plans—required as part of
Federal Insecticide, Fungicide,
and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)
cooperative agreements—
support the achievement of
agency goals and requirements.
The goal of the EPA national
pesticide program, consistent
with FIFRA, is to ensure that
pesticides are made available
for use and are properly sold,
distributed and used in a way
that is protective of human
health and the environment.
The EPA enters into cooperative
agreements with tribes that fund
compliance and enforcement
activities under FIFRA.
According to the EPA, the
FIFRA enforcement cooperative
agreements are important in
promoting environmental justice
and the welfare of tribes and the
quality of their environments.
This report addresses the
following:
• Ensuring the safety of
chemicals.
Address inquiries to our public
affairs office at (202) 566-2391 or
OIG WEBCOMMENTS@epa.oia.
List of OIG reports.
Tribal Pesticide Enforcement Comes Close
to Achieving EPA Goals, but "Circuit Rider"
Inspector Guidance Needed
What We Found
The EPA's negotiation, review and approval of
tribal pesticide cooperative agreement work
plans were close to supporting achievement of
the agency's goals and requirements. We
found that for the period covered by fiscal
years 2016-2017, the 17 participating tribes
completed 87 percent of projected inspections
and met 86 percent of applicable work-plan
requirements. Some tribes indicated they did not complete the projected number
of inspections and enforcement activities in their cooperative agreements due to
staff turnover. According to EPA program staff, some tribes have only one
inspector, and if the inspector departs the tribe must re-start its pesticide
compliance and enforcement program after a replacement inspector is found
and trained.
If a tribe is interested in establishing a pesticide cooperative enforcement
agreement with the EPA but does not have enough inspectable entities, such as
certified applicators or producing establishments, to justify its own cooperative
agreement, the EPA guidance suggests investigating whether the tribe can
affiliate with a circuit rider—an inspector who provides inspections to other tribes
as well as his/her own. We found, however, that tribes which use circuit riders
may not be fully aware of the scope or outcome of activities circuit riders
conduct. The agency's tribal pesticide circuit rider agreements can be improved
by setting clear performance expectations between circuit riders and the tribes
they serve, developing priority-setting plans, and providing opportunities for the
tribes to provide feedback directly to the EPA regarding performance and
concerns. Without these improvements, EPA regions are not able to gather
feedback and concerns from tribes about circuit rider performance.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We recommend that the Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and
Compliance Assurance require circuit riders to include the pesticide needs and
risks of each tribe in the development of their own priority-setting plans, develop
and implement tribal pesticide circuit rider guidance to detail expectation-setting
and communication plans with tribes served by circuit riders, and establish
regional processes to receive feedback from tribes served by circuit riders. The
agency agreed with our recommendations and provided acceptable corrective
actions.
Improvements in the "circuit
rider" program can enable
the EPA to better detect and
prevent pesticide misuse and
unnecessary risks to human
health and the environment
in Indian country.

-------