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NAPRA & GLEAMS NUTRIENT COMPONENT

OVERVIEW

The Need For Pesticide Environmental Risk Analysis

Pesticides have been found in surface and groundwater nationwide. Many pesticide detections can be attributed to point source contamination, but nonpoint source contamination due to agricultural practices is still a major concern. Management decisions have to be made to minimize the risk of pesticide pollution to the environment. Such decisions should delicately strike a balance between efficacy, economics and the environment to provide for voluntary sustainable agriculture.

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The NAPRA Process
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The goal of the National Agricultural Pesticide Risk Analysis (NAPRA) process is to help policy-makers as well as farmers to make informed pesticide management decisions on how to prevent or minimize the contamination of environmentally sensitive areas by hazardous pesticides. The NAPRA process is designed to help quantify the environmental benefits of potential management alternatives through the use of water quality simulation models combined with statistical analysis. Results are probability based and consider both the off-site movement of pesticide and its toxicity to non- target species.

The NAPRA approach was developed by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) at the Amherst, MA location. Key NRCS personnel involved in its development include Joseph Bagdon, Stephen Plotkin, Eric Hesketh, and Morgan Hugo. The NAPRA Web materials at this site were developed in cooperation with the NRCS NAPRA team.

The NAPRA Process for Indiana

The vulnerability of Indiana's groundwater to pollution from nonpoint sources has been well documented. One study has ranked the state 7th in groundwater vulnerability to pesticides. Several well monitoring studies have also documented detections of agrichemicals in Indiana's groundwater. This is very unfortunate because of the state's primary reliance on groundwater as a source of drinking water. The implementation of the NAPRA process in Indiana is unique in the sense that it aims to provide policy-makers and farmers alike a truly-networked medium for decision-making. The NAPRAWeb model (to distinguish it from the original version for the PC) provides the state of Indiana a medium for collectively and transparently building a pesticide management database for the whole state. Conservation officials from different districts can generate and evaluate their own management alternatives through the use of the model, submit it to a central database and integrate it with the results from the other districts. It is like collectively piecing a puzzle to see the whole picture. Farmers and land-owners on the other hand, may select a management alternative from the database, or better still, may generate and analyze their own management scenarios. Through the NAPRAWeb model, the search for solutions to nonpoint source pollution of our water resources becomes more global, systematic, transparent, accountable and accessible to everybody. It becomes easy for all of us who are concerned to get involved.