by Chris Wilson
Arkansas Farm Bureau

Straight to the point: It’s not a trap.

The Old & Abandoned Pesticide Collection & Disposal Project, which is conducted with support from the Arkansas Natural Resource Commission, Cooperative Extension Service and Arkansas Farm Bureau, was started in 2006 to help farmers get rid of unwanted pesticides safely and legally.

Both free and confidential, the project has seen many successes, but has also been approached with quite a bit of distrust and skepticism.

“It was something new,” said Suzanne Hirrel, environmental management specialist with the Cooperative Extension Service. “The farmers weren’t sure that they trusted it. In fact, we heard stories like: ‘Well, I would have brought mine in, but I thought EPA would be lurking out there, following me around.’”

The project’s first two collection events took place in June 2006 in Craighead and Woodruff counties, and brought in 9,588 pounds of pesticides.

Shortly after, the group started educational efforts.

“We hit a lot of producer meetings and county commodity meetings,” Hirrel said.

It was a strategy that worked well. By taking their case to the farmers and dispelling many of the myths surrounding the program, the group saw an increase in trust and confidence in the system. More importantly, more pesticides were turned in. 

To date, the project has had 15 events and disposed of 231,712 pounds of unwanted material from nine different counties.

There is one collection the group is especially proud of making.

“We got an inventory form in from a producer who thought he had about 4,000 pounds of calcium arsenic,” Hirrel said. “It turned out to be 40,000 pounds, a full tractor trailer load of stuff, and it was sitting almost on the bank of the Mississippi River. They actually had to cut a hole in the side of the building to get it out. There’s no telling how many years it had been sitting out there.”

To Hirrel, cases like this are clear examples of why the program is so important.

“A lot of these pesticides are just sitting in barns and sheds, stored and pushed to the back,” she said. “If a bunch of these were stored in a low-lying area, and we had a big flood, they could get into the watershed. That’s been our big concern.

“Even if they’re kept locked up and dry, and they’re doing as good a job as possible with them, catastrophic events — like tornadoes, floods and fires — can come along that we don’t have any control over.”

While the first phase of the project was focused on the L’Anguille River watershed — located in east central Arkansas and covering portions of Craighead, Poinsett, Cross, St. Francis, Woodruff and Lee counties — there are plans to take it statewide.

“Ideally,” Hirrel said, “we want to be able to go to every county in the Delta and offer this, because that’s where big agriculture is, and that’s where we think the largest amounts of these risky chemicals are. Once we’ve had the opportunity to get through all the Delta counties, we’d like to go to other areas of Arkansas and provide this service.”

While no dates or locations have been set, Mike Thompson, director of the Arkansas State Plant Board’s Pesticide Division, confirmed that the next phase of the project will focus on counties bordering the Mississippi River.

“We’re going to try to hold eight collections in 2008 — four in the spring, before planting and four more in the fall, after harvest,” Thompson said. “But, as always, it really depends on the funding.”

The collections are paid for by the Abandoned Pesticide Trust Fund, which is administered by Arkansas State Plant Board and funded by registration fees on pesticides sold in Arkansas.

“It’s the law,” explained Billie Majors, pesticide disposal coordinator with the Cooperative Extension Service. “Every time a pesticide is licensed in Arkansas, the manufacturer pays $50 to the fund.”

However, Majors stressed that while the project is funded through and supported by state agencies, the collections themselves are conducted without governmental involvement.

“The Department of Environmental Quality is supportive of the project,” Majors said. “But, they don’t really get involved, because they don’t want farmers to be hesitant to bring stuff in because they’re there. So, they stay out of it.”