News

Illinois pesticide legislation moving through General Assembly

The Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association is working with state lawmakers on pesticide related legislation.

President KJ Johnson tells Brownfield at the start of session, they were monitoring more than 100 bills impacting ag retailers, but now there are less than 10. He says the majority of those contain PFAS chemical regulations.  (HB3092, HB3128, HB3508, SB88 and SB1696)

“But I think those will get wrapped up into a bigger piece of legislation. We are trying to whittle down what is real and what is not on PFAS legislation, and I think we will see some subject matter hearings on that in the next couple of weeks.”

Another bill (HB3086/SB1726) would increase the fee for a pesticide license and registration through the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Johnson says IFCA is pushing for some improvements to accompany the higher cost.

“We would like to see the department go to continuous education on pesticide licenses. Also, right now everything is by check, you cannot pay by credit card to do your license. We are just trying to get the department to come to the 21^st century on that.”

He says there is also a bill to increase fines to applicators for human exposure to pesticides. (HB2254/SB203)

“There has been talk about increasing that fine for the more people you hit. We are working on an amendment with the sponsor of that bill and I think we will see something move on that this session.”

Johnson says proposed bills to make 2,4-D and dicamba restricted use pesticides (HB3800), create new rules for the disposal of unused pre-treated seed (HB3726) and ban neonicotinoids (SB187) were not called to committees and have been sidelined this session.