EPA phased out a toxic pesticide in 2010. Before Trump left office, it was approved for Florida citrus.

For 15 years, Florida citrus growers have struggled with a tiny Asian insect that has devastated crops and threatened the state's standing as the nation's top orange producer.

Industry leaders thought they had a solution: aldicarb, a potent but dangerous pesticide that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began phasing out in 2010.

But bringing back aldicarb for oranges and grapefruits wasn't a sure thing. Citing safety concerns, the EPA said in 2018 it would not endorse a similar proposal submitted to Florida's agriculture agency.

In 2019, a pesticide company gave it a try. It retained lobbyists who had worked on congressional agriculture committees. Members of the House Agriculture Committee joined the quest, questioning the EPA about the pace of its decision-making.

"What would it take" to get a ruling on the pesticide by the end of 2019, a congressional staffer asked an EPA official in an email.

The agency didn't act quite so quickly, but it did execute an about-face. Eight days before President Donald Trump left office in January, and 10 years after the EPA started phasing out the pesticide, the agency approved the use of aldicarb on Florida oranges and grapefruits.

That came after the agency neglected to conduct a full Endangered Species Act analysis for potential harmful effects.

It came after the EPA provided little opportunity for public comment.

And it came after the EPA changed how it estimates whether people might ingest unsafe amounts of aldicarb.

"There's this perception by the general public that regulators are protecting the public from environmental dangers. But that's far from the reality," said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization focused on safeguarding land, water and the climate. The group joined others that challenged the EPA decision in court.

Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, the former EPA official who was the penultimate decision-maker on the aldicarb application, said the main federal pesticide regulation requires the agency to evaluate environmental risks along with economic and social benefits. "I believe fully this was an example of government trying to balance the many factors that regulators are asked to balance," she said.

But the EPA, now under the Biden administration, told USA TODAY the agency "did pressure the career staff to speed up the timing of the aldicarb decision."

The agency said that didn't subvert the process. "Program leadership and staff scientists did evaluate the application carefully, incorporated additional refinements to mitigate risks and made a decision based on sound science," the EPA said.

Nonetheless, a federal appeals court vacated the pesticide approval in response to a petition filed by the Farmworker Association of Florida, the Environmental Working Group and Donley's organization. The EPA didn't challenge the decision.

USA TODAY's review of EPA and court records and interviews with those on both sides of the issue shows how politics and lobbying played into approval of a compound that has been banned in 125 countries and is responsible for the worst case of pesticide food poisoning in North American history.

How aldicarb dampened the Fourth of July

The EPA decides whether to register pesticides to protect certain crops that are threatened by pests. The agency allows the use of aldicarb to protect sugar beets, cotton, sweet potatoes and a few other crops.

Although effective, aldicarb carries risks. The EPA's approval for limited use in Florida citrus groves said a single granule could kill birds and mammals. High levels of aldicarb interfere with a human enzyme that controls messages sent to nerves.

The magnitude of the danger was manifested in 1979 in the eastern part of New York's Long Island, a longtime agricultural area. Testing found aldicarb contamination in an underground aquifer that supplied drinking water. In 1980, the EPA revoked the registration of aldicarb for that area at the manufacturer's request.

The worst North American food poisoning from a pesticide broke out on the West Coast during the summer of 1985, when more than 2,000 people were sickened by aldicarb-tainted watermelons. Dr. Lynn Goldman, at the time a California health official, remembers.

"I had to confiscate all the watermelons for the state during the July Fourth weekend. That wasn't fun," said Goldman, who went on to oversee the EPA's Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention office. She's now the dean and a professor at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.

In 2010, Bayer Crop Science, then the sole U.S. distributor of the pesticide, reached an agreement with the EPA to phase out its use because of safety concerns.

When the EPA began assessing the pesticide for Florida citrus crops in 2019, one staffer wrote in an email that "it looks like it is almost not being used anymore."

"Probably a good thing from an ECO perspective," wrote another EPA staffer, adding a smiley emoji.

Degraded forms of aldicarb can endure long after it's applied to crops. In a paper published in 2020, U.S. Geological Survey experts reported that water collected from monitoring wells in eastern Long Island's agricultural area contained low levels of those chemicals roughly 40 years after aldicarb was last used there.

Soon after the EPA-Bayer agreement, a North Carolina company called AgLogic Chemical LLP obtained the right to resume distribution. It started selling the pesticide in 2017.

Bug has devastated Florida citrus industry

The Asian citrus psyllid is a flying insect two to three millimeters long. First detected in Florida in 1998, the pest has become the state's most economically damaging insect, according to the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Citrus greening disease, the name for the bacterial ailment caused by the invasive pest, was responsible for losses of $7.8 billion in revenue and 7,500 jobs in Florida between 2006 and 2013, the institute calculated.

Florida orange production fell from 242 million boxes in the 2003-04 growing season to 52.8 million boxes in the 2020-21 season, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Florida's Asian psyllid problem is a national issue because the state has generated roughly 70% of the U.S. citrus crop in recent decades. The pest has been detected in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.

The bug spreads the disease by feeding on new shoots of an infected tree and moving on to healthy trees. Infected trees bear bitter fruit, and most die within a few years. There is no cure, according to the Department of Agriculture.

None of the possible solutions have showed immediate success. The most effective weapons have been pesticides – particularly aldicarb. In a comment filed with the EPA in December, Cody Lastinger, horticulture services manager for Florida-based United Citrus, said the pesticide does two things.

"Its primary use is to target insect that feed on the citrus tree, but it also provides a tree health response that results in higher yield and quality of fruit," Lastinger wrote.

In October 2020, members of Florida Citrus Mutual, a trade group for citrus growers, got a chance to tell the EPA their view of aldicarb. The attendees at the meeting in Florida included an agricultural adviser to then-EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, according to a report by Citrus Industry Magazine.

Mike Sparks, the trade group's CEO, wasn't at the meeting. However, he told the publication that his industry had "lost a very valuable tool” with the 2010 decision to phase out the pesticide.

From a lobbyist to a regulator in under 20 minutes

In April 2019, AgLogic filed an application with the EPA to distribute the pesticide for use on Florida citrus crops. Four months later, an AgLogic lobbyist took the company's quest to the top of the agency.

The EPA initially said it expected to make a decision by July 2020. That timing wouldn't allow the pesticide to be used until the 2021 growing season, wrote Joseph Bischoff, an AgLogic lobbyist from Cornerstone Government Affairs.

"We are hopeful that EPA can take steps to expedite the assessments and complete them by the end of 2019," Bischoff wrote.

His email went to Elizabeth Tate Bennett, a political appointee who worked as an associate administrator and adviser to Wheeler, the head of the EPA. She had prior experience as a lobbyist for the coal-linked National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Bennett later became an agricultural adviser to Trump.

Less than 20 minutes after receiving Bischoff's email, Bennett forwarded it to five EPA staffers, including Edward Messina, the acting director of the pesticide office. Bennett asked for an update on the application.

"I think they would like to know whether or not they will be able to spray THIS winter, which is why they'd like a decision sooner than next year," she wrote. "New to the issue but that was my take."

Bennett and Bischoff did not respond to requests for comment.

Pressure from the top?

Donley, the Center for Biodiversity scientist, said Bennett's email signaled potential pressure on the EPA scientists who were reviewing AgLogic's application.

Dunn, the former assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, disagreed. When someone in the EPA administrator's office sends an inquiry about a pending application, she said, "you obtain an answer for them, but it doesn't change the answer." She noted that the EPA did not issue a ruling by the requested deadline.

However, Nader Elkassabany, a federal regulatory system specialist who worked for 15 years in the EPA Office of Pesticide Programs, said that sort of inquiry "does create pressure. It shows the high-level staff is paying attention to this." He declined to say whether he had experienced anything similar at the EPA.

Perception of a close link between the EPA and pesticide distributors "is one of the flaws in pesticide regulation in the U.S.," said Alexis Temkin a toxicologist for the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization that has spotlighted harmful agricultural practices. When the EPA sought comment on the aldicarb application, she urged rejection.

Antoine Puech, AgLogic's owner and manager, said, "There was no pressure put on EPA. ... It's fair to say the citrus industry and us, we asked for help," Puech said. "They're looking at a 50-year low in the production of oranges."

A 2018 survey of EPA employees by the agency's inspector general asked about such situations. It found that roughly one-fifth of those who respondedsaid they did not feel free to express scientific opinions at work without fear of retaliation. The same percentage said they could not always expect to have "no alteration or suppression of their research findings outside of technical merit."

Michal Freedhoff, who now holds Dunn's position at the EPA, sent a memo to staffers in the agency's chemical safety division in March. "Over the past few years, I am aware that political interference sometimes compromised the integrity of our science," Freedhoff wrote. AgLogic's application was not among the examples she cited.

'What would it take' to speed up EPA's decision?

AgLogic's lobbyists weren't the only ones who pressed the EPA about the aldicarb application.

In August 2019, Jeremy Witte, a Republican staffer on the House Agriculture Committee, emailed an EPA government affairs official.

Witte, who previously worked for Cornerstone, AgLogic's lobbying firm, acknowledged that the pesticide "still has to go through the process and evaluation." But he sought a speedier answer so Florida growers could "look for other options."

"What would it take to move" the decision "date up to the end of this year?" asked Witte. He did not respond to messages seeking comment.

His email went to Sven-Erik Kaiser, an official in the EPA's office of congressional and government relations. In an email to EPA staffers that month, Kaiser wrote, "House minority staff asks about the possibility of speeding up the aldicarb date to the end of this year so growers can plan for the 2020 season."

EPA emails released to the Center for Biological Diversity do not show whether Kaiser responded.

However, they do show that EPA officials gathered information for a phone conference with Republican members of the House Agriculture Committee in September 2019 and a subsequent call with the panel's Democratic majority.

On Oct. 3, 2019, Michael Goodis, director of the registration division in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, responded to a colleague's email that bore the subject line "House Ag Inquiry on Aldicarb."

"I really need a schedule on when we expect results from the (EPA pesticide) analysis," Goodis wrote. "They keep coming back."

Karen McCormack is a former staffer in the EPA pesticide office who also worked as a policy analyst and communications specialist for the agency. She's criticized the EPA over so-called regulatory capture – when government officials become too close to the companies they oversee.

"It is a big problem in the pesticide program of the EPA," McCormack said. "The pesticide companies have a big say in what the EPA does."

Goldman, dean of George Washington University's School of Public Health, agreed, saying pesticide companies "can get senior (congressional) agriculture staff to exert pressure."

The EPA said it's not unusual for members of Congress and their staff to inquire about pending applications, and stressed that the agency bases its decisions on sound science and the law.

Late public notice, sudden approval

The EPA did not follow its requirement to notify the public when AgLogic asked in April 2019 for permission to distribute aldicarb in Florida.

On Dec. 7, 2020, more than a year and a half after AgLogic filed its application, the EPA notified the public and opened a 30-day comment period. The announcement included no details of AgLogic's proposal or EPA documents, making it difficult for anyone to weigh in.

The EPA said it posted the notice belatedly after realizing it hadn't been done. Notices of receipt "do not contain detailed information about the evaluation of the application," the agency said.

The EPA blamed the delay on the agency's transition to remote working amid the pandemic. Donley questioned that, noting the EPA had received AgLogic's application long before.

"We wanted application materials or agency analysis made available for comment, which is common practice" even when those disclosures are not formally required, Donley said.

As the public comment period closed on Jan. 7, the EPA made public five documents on the aldicarb application. They included information that Donley and other commenters said should have been made available earlier.

Five days later – and eight days before Trump left the White House – the EPA approved a conditional registration for Aldicarb's use on Florida citrus crops.

The timing suggested the agency had drafted the review documents before the public comment period, which the EPA viewed "as a legal formality," Donley said in a court declaration.

The EPA opted not to seek public comment about its decision. The agency told USA TODAY it acted "out of consideration for the application season on oranges and grapefruit in Florida."

In the court declaration and an interview, Donley compared the pace of the aldicarb approval to three other EPA registrations for citrus crops since 2014: two for antibiotics and one for a pesticide. In those cases, the EPA provided background about the applications, held two comment periods and took hundreds of days to issue decisions.

"The unconventional timeline of this approval, the controversial nature of the approval and the fact that this decision happened eight days before the beginning of a new administration, makes me incredibly skeptical that this decision was not unduly influenced," Donley said in a court filing.

EPA adjusted measurement of dietary risk

As it reviewed AgLogic's application, the EPA estimated how much aldicarb could end up in people's bodies through their diets. One question was how much of the pesticide might leach into drinking water near citrus groves.

In 2010, an EPA assessment showed that exposure to the pesticide from food and water exceeded the agency's level of concern, or estimated safety level, for infants and children up to age five, Donley wrote in a court declaration.

That analysis played into the agency's agreement at the time to phase out aldicarb.

Seven years later, the EPA issued results of a 15-year review of aldicarb. The assessment established the aldicarb safety threshold in drinking water at 0.87 parts per billion. None of the uses of aldicarb at that time exceeded that concentration.

The agency established that threshold based on what it said was the conservative assumption that "aldicarb would be present at this concentration every time someone uses or consumes drinking water."

But a January 2021 EPA drinking water exposure assessment for AgLogic's proposal to use Aldicarb on Florida citrus estimated that the maximum surface and groundwater amounts of the pesticide could range from 1.67 to 2.40 parts per billion, above the earlier threshold.

The agency said it measured the estimated aldicarb exposure by using a "more realistic" review based on expectations that concentrations in surface and drinking water would vary over time from rainfall and chemical degradation.

The entire distribution of drinking water concentrations resulted in measurements below the 0.87 parts per billion threshold, the agency said.

"When this distribution is paired with a range of food intakes" that "can reduce the overall dietary risk estimate," the EPA said.

Donley contended the agency "changed the approach they took and everything was magically safe again."

"What the EPA is saying is that you may be exposed to a harmful level of aldicarb, but you will also be exposed to non-harmful levels, and it will all just average out to be fine," he said. "If their estimates are off by a tiny bit, people could be harmed."

The EPA allowed aldicarb to be applied for three growing seasons. It said no more than 2.5 million pounds could be applied per year on a maximum annual total of 100,000 acres of Florida citrus groves.

The agency required growers to apply the pesticide at least three inches below ground to reduce water runoff and wildlife exposure. To prevent drinking water contamination, aldicarb could not be used within 500 feet of wells. The EPA said the restrictions were required to meet "agency safety standards."

AgLogic was instructed to submit regular reports to the EPA, which planned to monitor the pesticide.

In explaining its approval, the EPA said the risk-benefit law for registering pesticides requires the agency to balance "potential exposures to humans," such as citrus workers, with the economic and social benefits that aldicarb would "provide to the agricultural community."

Birds, sea turtles at risk

Donley's organization and a farmworker's group petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overturn the EPA's decision. They argued that the agency failed to conduct a full risk assessment required under the Endangered Species Act to determine whether the pesticide would threaten any animal or put its habitat at risk.

The petition argued that the aldicarb approval could endanger the Florida scrub jay, the wood stork, sea turtles, and other species whose habitats overlap with areas where the pesticide would be used.

The agency acknowledged that it had not done the full analysis but said it has worked with other federal agencies on "interim approaches" to address risks from pesticides for endangered species. That work is continuing.

In June, the appeals court said the EPA had violated the Endangered Species Act and denied the EPA's motion to send the case back so the agency could conduct the required review.

The EPA has been tripped up by similar failures before, including in a June federal appeals court decision on the agency's role in setting annual increases of renewable biofuel in the nation's fuel supply. The court ruled that the EPA failed to conduct an adequate review before concluding that its 2019 biofuel decision would not affect endangered species or their habitats.

"It takes a lot of resources to conduct an Endangered Species Act assessment," said Elkassabany, the former EPA pesticide office staffer. "There are a lot of these cases at EPA, and they don't have the resources to do it."

The EPA's approval of aldicarb turned out to be moot even before the federal court ruling vacated it. Two months earlier, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services ruled that AgLogic's application was not in compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, now running for governor, said aldicarb "poses an unacceptable risk to human, animal, and environmental health in Florida."

Having a state openly disagree with an EPA registration decision is almost unheard of, said Goldman, the George Washington University health school dean.

Dunn, the former EPA executive, is now a partner at Baker Botts, a global law firm headquartered in Houston. She said the EPA's decision was a science-driven outcome that amounted to "trying to save Florida citrus but also being ready to acknowledge that it might not work."

So far, it has not.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: EPA pressured by lobbyists and industry to rule on toxic pesticide