The sponsor of a bill to sought to make it harder for people to use common forms of rat poison killed her effort this week, concluding after months of negotiations that the bill would have created “a high likelihood of a policy failure.”
Senate Bill 62 originally sought to regulate application of most forms of rodenticide that are used by everyone from farmers to facility operators to capture or poison rats and prevent infestations. The measure’s sponsors, Democratic Sens. Lisa Cutter of Morrison and Cathy Kipp of Fort Collins, narrowed it significantly, passing out of that chamber a bill that would have required licensed applicators to apply second-generation anticoagulants that are the most lethal form of the poisons.
Backers of the bill emphasized that the highly toxic rodenticides have sent thousands of children and house pets to emergency care with poisoning and said they must be applied by professionals who will know how to keep those populations safe. They also argued the poisons are a bioaccumulation hazard, as the rats that ingest them are then eaten by predators from raptors to mountain lions that can sicken or die because of the poison.
However, farmers who have been using those substances for many years complained that having to hire a licensed professional or to get their own licensing to use rodenticides would be an unnecessary cost at a time of financial struggles in the sector. And they were joined in protest of the bill by a powerful new ally as it headed to the House — rural school districts who warned that the added cost and regulations could leave their buildings susceptible to rodents.
Fear of schools “overridden with rats”
Rep. Lori Goldstein, D-Westminster, said she was familiar with the impact of the rodenticides on peregrine falcons and was concerned about that. However, she said the unintended consequences of protecting those animals could be adverse impacts on school children whose buildings are homes to disease-carrying rodents.
“I think we all want the same thing here. We all want safety, but we don’t want the environment to be affected adversely by it,” Goldstein told the House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee during a Monday hearing. “But at the same time, I also understand public health. And we don’t want our schools to be overridden with rats — or our barns.”
Sponsoring Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, D-Glenwood Springs, said she explored several options to meet everyone’s concerns in the bill. She looked at reducing licensing fees — a major pinch point in Senate debate — but found that would drive a fiscal note that would make the bill hard to pass as the state faces a $1.5 billion budget shortfall. She also explored codifying federal regulations around distribution and use of the poisons into state law, but she learned that states can’t duplicate or enforce manufacturing controls, she said.
Poison debate likely to return
The bill, in the form that it arrived at the House, essentially was an effort to try to limit the use of second-generation anticoagulants by restricting who could apply them. But as Rep. Lesley Smith, a Boulder Democrat and bill backer, discovered that these rodenticides are available for easy purchase on Amazon and other online retail sites, legislative supporters began to question too how enforceable SB 62 could be.
So, with Velasco concluding that the proposal could fail to bring about the policy goals that it intended, she opted Monday to ask committee members to kill her proposal. But she said she hopes to resume the conversation in the future, and several committee members encouraged her to do so.
“I think it’s incredibly important that we figure this out in order to better protect humans and wildlife,” Rep. Tammy Story, an Evergreen Democrat who was one of two committee members who voted against killing the bill, said. “There are plenty of users out there that aren’t following the rules on labels, and that is a huge issue.”
A session full of agricultural issues
The defeat of SB 62 represents another victory for a farm sector that is under siege from a combination of tariffs, rising supply costs and depressed commodity prices but has fought back against proposals this session that leaders said cold make their jobs more difficult.
Opposition from the industry led to the death in February of SB 65, a proposal to put restrictions on the use of common pesticide-treated seeds.
And support from farmers pushed through the House and Senate a measure, SB 121, that would require agricultural laborers to work 56 hours before getting time-and-a-half overtime pay, leaving it awaiting only a signature from Gov. Jared Polis before becoming law. Sector leaders said the current 48-hour overtime threshold for most of the year has led them to have to cut hours — and pay — for farm workers, pushing some of those workers to take second or third jobs or to move to neighboring states for work.