Pesticide commonly used in broccoli, vineyards facing ban.

Maybe it should come as no surprise that a comparison to Congress now qualifies as an insult, but even the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals went there in an Aug. 10 decision.

“Although filibustering may be a venerable tradition in the U.S. Senate, it is frowned upon in administrative agencies tasked with protecting human health,” Judge Margaret McKeown wrote in an opinion against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The ruling ended eight years of challenges by anti-pesticide and farmworker rights groups arguing EPA’s standards for the pesticide chlorpyrifos were too weak. The pesticide was banned in 2000 from household use, but permitted in farming. EPA has continued to analyze safe levels for use in farming.

The Court of Appeals ordered EPA to bring its analysis to a swift conclusion, saying the agency had had ample time. The EPA responded Oct. 31 with an announcement that the science remains inconclusive, but to comply with the court ruling, the agency proposes banning the pesticide entirely. (A 60-day public comment period on the proposed revocation runs through Jan. 5.)

Chlorpyrifos is used on dozens of crops in the country, and mostly on wine grapes and broccoli in Monterey County. Locally, it’s applied mostly to broccoli fields to kill the cabbage root maggot, which chews on stems and destroys plants.

“There really aren’t any good alternatives,” Assistant Agricultural Commissioner Bob Roach says.

But some growers appear to be finding alternatives. New regulations controlling water pollution from farms took effect in 2011, and single out chlorpyrifos as particularly toxic; growers who use the organophosphate are automatically included in a higher tier, and subject to closer monitoring. Nearly 17,000 acres of broccoli in Monterey County were treated with chlorpyrifos in 2011, and less than 3,300 acres in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available.