Maria Duenas, GEPA (PENDING PHOTO FOR MARIA)
Veronica Fruge, GEPA

Maria & Veronica SHARED BIO: Maria Duenas and Veronica Fruge are Environmental Health Specialists with Guam EPA. They are responsible for regulating pesticides under our local mandate, the Guam Pesticides Regulations, to determine if a pesticide is correctly labeled, used, and disposed of properly. Other responsibilities include permitting, inspections, compliance monitoring, and enforcement on marketers, distributors, and applicators of insecticides, fungicides, and rodenticides.  Maria and Veronica oversee the importation of suspected pesticide products or devices that arrive through our borders to ensure those not registered with USEPA do not go through and may potentially harm our environment.

Maria and Veronica continue to provide certification and training requirements for pesticide applicators. They coordinate and conduct training workshops with other government agencies, such as the University of Guam and Guam Customs & Quarantine. In order to streamline the data collection and reporting in the Pesticide Enforcement Program, they are involved in the technical assistance for grant applications to include pesticide related information into the Guam EPA database system. This innovative transition will prepare for the pesticide use steadily increasing due to the growth in both infrastructure and population on Guam.