Oversight Inspection Project Schedule for Fiscal Year 2003/04

Enclosed is the Department of Pesticide Regulation’s (DPR’s) Oversight Inspection Project Schedule for fiscal year 2003/04. The schedule provides instructions the Enforcement Branch staff will use when conducting oversight inspections related to agricultural production with county agricultural commissioner (CAC) staff in five counties. Oversight inspections for each county will be based on the amount of production agriculture activity as determined from pesticide use reporting data and CAC workload information from the Pesticide Regulatory Activities Monthly Report. Our goal is to perform a total of 200 oversight inspections in the five counties. A table of the annual goals for each county is described in the enclosed schedule. The oversight inspections will be limited to agricultural production settings and focus on Worker Protection Standard requirements as reflected in California’s worker safety regulations.

The five focus counties for 2003/04 are Butte, Lake, San Benito, Fresno, and Riverside. The counties were chosen based on the following criteria:

1. High agricultural use
2. Low compliance from the 97-01 compliance assessment report
3. One county per regional area group
4. Logistics for regional offices (budget/travel impacts)
5. High grower to Pest Control Business/Farm Labor Contractor ratio

Data collected from the inspections will be summarized and provided to each county at the completion of this project. Since Fresno and Riverside counties were included in the original compliance assessment project, the compliance data from those two counties will be compared with the data results of that assessment. Butte, Lake, and San Benito counties were not included in the original compliance assessment project, so the results of this project will establish baseline compliance data for those counties.

Workload associated with implementing the Oversight Inspection Project should be addressed in your 2003/04 Negotiated Work Plans. Since most oversight inspections will be performed in the five listed counties, all other counties can expect fewer oversight inspections than have been performed in the past.

If you have any questions regarding this project, please feel free to contact your senior pesticide use specialist.

Sincerely,