Colorado Pesticide General Permit - What you need to know

Will your discharge conform to one of the following use patterns as defined on page 5, Part 1.1.1, of the permit?

• Mosquito and Flying Insect Control
• Weeds and Algae
• Forest Canopy Pest Control
• Animal Pest Control

If no, you do not qualify for permit coverage under the PGP and may need an individual permit for your discharge.  

If yes, you are automatically authorized to proceed with the application of pesticides to Waters of the State.

  If you’re the one in charge of deciding to make an application of pesticides to the Waters of the State, and you have day-to-day control of those decisions, you are the Decision Maker and the legal contact for the permit.

  If you make the decisions AND apply the pesticide, you are both the Decision Maker and the Applicator

  If you are the person in charge of deciding to make an application of pesticides to Waters of the State but you want to hire someone to perform the application, you are the Decision Maker and the person you hire is the Applicator. The Decision Maker is the person responsible for reporting to CDPHE where required.

If the discharge is to an irrigation ditch or canal, the guidance in this section does not apply, since none of these waters are classified as impaired or outstanding in Colorado. For discharges to all other surface waters, the operator must review the information in the Colorado regulation to determine the status of the water, as follows:

Impaired waters

You need to determine if the water body to which you plan to discharge is impaired (has poor quality) for any of the ingredients in your product or any degradates of the ingredients in your product. If so, you may not use that product on that water body. For example, if you plan to use copper sulfate but the stream is impaired for copper or sulfate, you may not use that product.  Degradates of a product can be difficult to determine and consultation may be needed. CSU Extension programs are good resources. You may contact Troy Bauder (troy.bauder@colostate.edu) at CSU with your questions.

To determine impairments in a water body you must look in Regulation 93 and see if the water body to which you intend to apply pesticides has impairments for any of the ingredients in your product. Regulation 93 can be found on the division’s pesticide page.

Entries in Regulation 93 look like the table example below:

1 - The division uses the following method to identify stream segments in Colorado. These are called Water Body Identifications (WBIDs). Translation from the table above follows:

• CO = Colorado
• AR = Arkansas River
• FO = Fountain Creek (tributary to Arkansas River)
• 02a = the stretch of stream/river described in the Segment Description of the table

2 - This column refers to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of a particular parameter, meaning that the stream segment is borderline impaired. If the segment is M&E for an ingredient in your product, you are not prohibited from discharging to that segment, but you will be contributing to the impairment. Further impairment of a segment generally leads to a listing on the 303(d) list which in turn would prohibit you from using your product in the future on that stream segment. Monitoring and Evaluation is indicated for the total recoverable (Trec) form of iron in the table above.

3 - Parameters listed here are prohibited from being discharged to the stream segment under the Colorado Pesticide General Permit. If your product contains any of the ingredients, or degradates of those ingredients, that match what’s listed in this column, you may not apply. In this case, you could not apply a pesticide with copper to this segment. Pay attention to this column!

You need to determine if the water body to which you plan discharge is an Outstanding Water. Discharges to outstanding waters are not allowed under the Colorado Pesticide General Permit unless the discharge is meant to restore or maintain water quality or to protect public health or the environment. These discharges must either not degrade water quality at all or, if they will degrade water quality, they may only be applied on a short-term or temporary basis. 

There are no outstanding waters located east of I-25 in Colorado. For discharges located west of I-25, the determination of whether or not a water body is an Outstanding Water can be made using the pesticide permit interactive map on the pesticide main page (look for the map link to Outstanding Waters, 2012).

If it appears that you may be discharging to an Outstanding Water, you need to verify the information from the map by looking up the water body in the Numeric Standards Tables for the basin to which the application will occur. More information can be
found on the water quality control commission regulation website.

1. Open the applicable basin regulation (e.g. Regulation 38 for the South Platte basin)
   -The tables you’ll need are the appendices
2. Find the stream segment applicable to your discharge
3. Outstanding Waters will be identified as “OW” in the lower left corner of the table as shown below:

An operator that meets ALL of the following criteria is required to prepare and maintain a Pesticide Discharge Management Plan, or PDMP. The operator must:

1. be a Decision-maker, AND
2. be required to submit an annual report (Table 7-2 of the permit), AND
3. be a Large Entity, which is defined in the permit as either a business that exceeds the Small Business Administration size standard as identified at 13 CFR 121.201, or a local government that serves a population of greater than 10,000).

Part 5 of the permit identifies the requirements for the completion and maintenance of a PDMP.

There is a single reporting mechanism with the PGP, and not all operators are required to submit reporting paperwork. The intent of the reporting requirement is for the largest operators to provide data concerning where, when, and how much product is used. Special Districts, certain agencies that are considered land stewards, and those operators that apply pesticides beyond a given threshold are required to submit reporting forms (see Table 7-2 of the permit) by February 1 of each year. The report will summarize discharges made over the previous calendar year.

Please use our annual report template.