Water-Quality Assessment of the Trinity River Basin, Texas - Pesticides in a Coastal Prairie Agricultural Area, 1994-95

Abstract

Agriculture is a major land use in the coastal prairie area located in the southern part of the Trinity River Basin. Crops grown in the area include rice, sorghum, and soybeans. Pesticide- use estimates for the area show that compounds with the highest use are the herbicides: molinate, propanil, thiobencarb, metolachlor, acifluorfen, bentazon, and atrazine and the insecticides: carbaryl and methyl parathion. More than 20 pesticide samples collected from each of three streams in the coastal prairie resulted in detections of 29 different pesticide compounds. The most frequently detected compounds were the herbicides: atrazine, metolachlor, and molinate, which were detected in more than 75 percent of the samples. Herbicides were detected more frequently than insecticides. Maximum concentrations of atrazine, metolachlor, and molinate occurred in the spring and were 4, 1.9, and 200 micrograms per liter (?g/L), respectively. Almost all concentrations of atrazine and metolachlor were below drinking water standards; no standard is available for molinate. Concentrations and estimated loads and percent of applied compound lost to the streams were generally higher in the watersheds where more of the pesticides were applied to crops.