Bush Seeks Waivers to Pesticide Ban
Methyl Bromide

ANDREW C REVKIN / NY Times 30jan03

The Bush administration is moving to help industries keep using a pesticide that is scheduled to be banned under an international agreement to restore the earth's protective ozone layer, several government officials say.

Administration officials say they are prepared to request that some of the pesticide users - ranging from farmers to golf course operators - be exempted from the ban on the pesticide, methyl bromide, called for in 2005 under the international treaty.

The officials say the exemptions are justified under the treaty's language because there are no effective substitutes for methyl bromide and businesses would be harmed.

But environmental activists say that if too many exemptions are granted, efforts to undo damage to the ozone layer will be set back years, saying exemptions from the ban would undermine the Montreal Protocol, a 15-year-old pact signed by the United States that is widely perceived as the most effective environmental treaty ever negotiated.

The White House has until Friday to decide how many exemptions to request from the international body that administers the treaty, the Ozone Secretariat of the U.N. Environment Program.

Under the treaty's timetable, industrialized countries have steadily decreased use of methyl bromide since 1999 and are to end all use by 2005, except where there are no effective substitutes or markets would be disrupted.

More than 50 applications for "critical-use exemptions" have been submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency, by agricultural groups and businesses as varied as chrysanthemum and strawberry growers, flour millers and golf course groomers.

If most exemptions are granted, American use of the pesticide could sharply rise in 2005, exceeding levels currently allowed under the treaty and federal law.