E.P.A.’s Decision Not to Ban Chlorpyrifos

Here is the 2005 announcement that the E.P.A. intended to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which is used on a variety of fruits and vegetables, including apple, almonds and dozens of other crops. Research had shown that it might be causing development disabilities in children, particularly those who live near farms where it is used. E.P.A. scientists, unable to state definitively that it is safe, proposed banning its commercial use.

Dow Chemical, a pesticide manufacturer, has worked for years to prevent the E.P.A. from banning chlorpyrifos. That effort intensified with the election of President Trump and the arrival of Scott Pruitt at the E.P.A.. Here Dow sends in signatures it helped collect from farmers opposing the ban. These are a few pages from an 80-page document Dow sent to the E.P.A., among many other documents, protesting the planned ban.

In this meeting that took place in early March, agriculture industry executives pushed Mr. Pruitt to not remove any additional pesticides from the market, and Mr. Pruitt promised that the Trump administration and his tenure represented a "new day" in terms of the relationship with their industry.

Here are email discussions among some of Scott Pruitt's top political aides, including Samantha Dravis,who once served in senior roles with the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and its affiliated Rule of Law Defense Fund and now is the head of the E.P.A.'s powerful Office of Policy. Ms. Davis here is told about the upcoming decision the agency will need to make about whether to ban chlorpyrifos, as a federal court had given the E.P.A. until the end of March 2017 to decide on the decade-old petition requesting the ban, for health reasons. Wendy Cleland-Hamnett is the top E.P.A. official in charge of the toxic chemical and pesticides program. So Ms. Dravis and Ryan Jackson, Mr. Pruitt's chief of staff, discuss here how they will have to deal with Ms. Hamnett on this matter.

The New York Times, based on extensive interviews, these documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as hand-written journals maintained by Ms. Hamnett has now been able to reconstruct how this decision on chlorpyifos was made. This Friday, March 3 meeting was a critical moment, where Ms. Hamnett met with Mr. Jackson, the chief of staff to Mr. Pruitt, with the recommendation that the pesticide be banned. But Mr. Jackson made clear he did not like this option and he wanted alternatives.

This email is sent to Ms. Hamnett following the March 3 meeting, after she has been asked, she said in an interview, to come up with options other than banning the pesticide. Ms Hamnett writes back that she is still preparing the list of alternatives, which will be presented to Mr. Pruitt.

The decision on the pesticide ban was made in the middle of an effort by the E.P.A. to step up its efforts to curb federal regulations. Samantha Dravis is also in charge of that effort.

Here Ryan Jackson, the E.P.A.'s chief of staff under Mr. Pruitt, writes to Samantha Dravis, a political appointee who is the head of policy at the E.P.A.. He is discussing the March 3 conversation he had with Wendy Cleland-Hamnett in which he pushed back at the plan to ban the pesticide. Mr. Jackson writes to Ms. Dravis that Ms. Hamnett and her team"know where this is headed" meaning the decision on chlorpyrifos.

Here are notes that Ms. Hamnett took down, and shared with The Times, detailing a series of meetings she had with Mr. Jackson, in which he forced her to reject a proposed ban on the pesticide. In the first meeting on March 3, he pressed her to come up with alternatives to a formal ban, the notes show and Ms. Hamnett said in an interview. Mr. Jackson said he felt like he had been "forced into a box" by the petition to ban the pesticide, which had been filed a decade ago by environmentalists, but which a court had ordered the E.P.A. to respond to by the end of March 2017.

Here is a list of alternatives that Ms. Hamnett comes up with to present to Mr. Jackson, as a way to give him an option beyond simply banning the pesticide. The first is to "grant" or approve the ban. The second is to negotiating a slower phase out of the pesticide, while denying the formal petition to ban it. A third is to deny the ban based on a legalistic argument, based in part on the fact that this is a new administration with different priorities, and to announce that instead the agency will conduct a review of the pesticide that would last for several years, until 2022.

In this set of notes, Ms. Hamnett records details of a follow up meeting with Mr. Jackson. In an interview, Ms. Hamnett said that after she presented the list of options, Mr. Jackson picked the denial for legalistic route. And Ms. Hamnett was then instructed to prepare a draft order rejecting the pesticide ban, even though she and others at the agency felt like imposing the ban was the appropriate public health move.

Here Byron R. Brown, the E.P.A.'s deputy chief of staff, writes to Mr. Jackson, his boss. He is discussing a plan to meet with agriculture industry officials in March, as the agency was considering the pesticide ruling, and emphasizing that the goal was to improve industry relations. The industry was opposed to the ban, as it wanted to be able to continue to use chlorpyrifos on its crops. The email also discusses the pending order to fully deny the proposed ban.

Here is an exchange of emails from March 16, where Ms. Hamnett tells top agency officials that she has prepared a draft to deny the petition to ban the pesticide, as the political appointees had requested. The formal order denying the petition must be shared with the E.P.A.'s Office of General Council for review, before Mr. Pruitt signs it.

The United States Department of Agriculture, which is not an environmental agency, separately also opposed the ban. Here E.P.A. political appointees show their effort to demonstrate that the position they have taken is also supported by the U.S.D.A. The staff also works on preparing a press release that will be sent out announcing the decision.

Here the E.P.A. senior staff discusses getting sign off by a White House official, Ray Starling, who is the special assistant to the president for agriculture, trade and food assistance. Mr. Starling would ultimately approve the statement, the emails show.

On the same day the decision is signed, Mr. Pruitt is also getting praise from the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. Farmers opposed the ban, as they wanted to continue to use the pesticide.

The emails obtained by The Times show that Mr. Pruitt won immediate praise from agriculture groups, involving in large scale farming, like the farm bureau, which had pushed the agency to reject the ban. But there is no communications provided as part of the response from environmental groups.

Here is a news release from a group known as the Pesticide Policy Coalition, which includes pesticide manufacturers, praising the decision by the E.P.A., as well as a know from a Senate aide asking the agency to make sure it tells the Senate Republicans before it makes major decisions like this public.

The E.P.A. already apparently had a meeting set up with more agriculture industry leaders, including CropLife, the group that includes pesticide manufactures like Dow AgroSciences LLC, and they offered a thank you to the E.P.A. and moved on to discussing ways to prevent scientific studies like the one that threatened chlorpyrifos. Again, no sign at least in these emails that public health or environmental groups were consulted.